His new master, Basire, was one of those workmen who magnify their office and make it honorable. The most distinguished of four generations of Basires, engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings from the monuments, with no oversight but that of his own taste and his own conscience. And a rich reward we may well suppose his integrity brought him, in the charming solitudes of those old-time sanctuaries. Wandering up and down the consecrated aisles,--eagerly peering through the dim, religious light for the beautiful forms that had leaped from many a teeming brain now turned to dust,--reproducing, with patient hand, graceful outline and deepening shadow,--his daring, yet reverent heart held high communion with the ages that were gone. The Spirit of the Past overshadowed him. The grandeur of Gothic symbolism rose before him. Voices of dead centuries murmured low music down the fretted vault. Fair ladies and brave gentlemen came up from the solemn chambers where they had lain so long in silent state, and smiled with their olden grace. Shades of nameless poets, who had wrought their souls into a cathedral and died unknown and unhonored, passed before the dreaming boy, and claimed their immortality. Nay, once the Blessed Face shone through the cloistered twilight, and the Twelve stood roundabout. In this strange solitude and stranger companionship many an old problem untwined its Gordian knot, and whispered along its loosened length,-- "I give you the end of a golden string: Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, Built in Jerusalem wall." To an engraving of "Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion," executed at this time, he appends,--"This is one of the Gothic artists who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages, wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins; of whom the world was not worthy. Such were the Christians in all ages."