In the sketch, "Nelson" is drawn symbolically as a young sea-god, nude and commanding. He stands firmly on a coil of Leviathan's body, which rearing and circling surrounds him like a frame. We can just distinguish the human forms caught in the serpent's toils, and its great mouth is in the act of devouring a man. The mouth is bridled, and the reins held by Nelson's hand. The symbolism is easy enough to understand and requires no explanation. A carefully shaded and conscientious drawing of a naked man with arms upraised testifies to the fact that Blake _did_ work from the model sometimes. But how cold such work appears--valuable and necessary as it is--compared with the passionate half-defined sketches, the mood of which transfers to us something of the high pleasure that Blake himself felt in making these burning transcripts from his imagination or visions. I had much ado to make out the subject of the pen-and-wash sketch of a woman and man with a group of people on their knees in a cornfield. In the distance a thunder-cloud emits a lightning flash. Mr. Shields tells me that he and Dante Gabriel Rossetti spent an evening trying to decipher a larger and more definite sketch of the same idea, and finally decided that it was an illustration of the following verses (1 Sam. xii. 16-19): "Now therefore stand and see this great thing which the Lord will do before your eyes. Is it not wheat harvest to-day? I will call unto the Lord and he shall send thunder and rain; that ye may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking you a king. So Samuel called unto the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel."