Fuseli had shared with Blake an admiration for Lavater. In an age of crude scepticism he openly confessed his faith in Christ. With Blake he reckoned outline the foundation of great art. Here was much on which the two men could meet. But Fuseli never quite dug down to fundamental principles. He declared again and again that "our ideas are the offspring of our senses," and Blake regarded such damnable Lockian heresy as rank atheism; and among his other heresies, also damnable in Blake's eyes, was an enthusiasm for Titian and Correggio, and a summary denial that Albert Dürer was a man of genius. Hence, Fuseli and Blake, with regard for one another, were never intimate friends. It was about the year 1818 that Blake found himself in the midst of a new and younger circle. George Cumberland, himself young and orthodox on outline, introduced him to John Linnell and John Varley. John Varley moved from 2 Harris Place to 5 Broad Street, Golden Square, about 1806. His house was shared with William Mulready, who married his sister. His wife, Esther, was sister of John Gisborne, who moved in the Shelley and Godwin set. Another sister married Copley Fielding. Here was a group of artists connected by marriage. Varley helped to found the Water Colour Society in 1804, and drew to himself many young men who were more or less his pupils. Among these, besides Mulready, were W. H. Hunt, John Linnell, Samuel Palmer, James Holmes. With the big, fat, genial Varley Blake soon became friends. Varley was a typical once-born man, and his clean earthiness made its irresistible appeal to the twice-born Blake with his head in the skies. Besides his water-colours he pursued with equal ardour and success the study of astrology. Minds of Blake's order have been apt to believe in astrology, like Jacob Boehme and Paracelsus; but Varley failed to convert Blake because, no doubt, of the extremely materialistic explanation that he could only give of his science. The stars, according to the astrology that the Western mind scoffs at, are supposed to exert a direct influence on the destinies and characters of men. But there is an Oriental doctrine that dispenses with such a crude theory, considering that the stars have no more direct influence on character than the hands of a clock on time. Like all mysticism, East and West, it regards the universe as the macrocosm and man the microcosm. Between the two there is a correspondence, and therefore the state of the microcosm can be read by the starry indications of the macrocosm as the time can be known by the hands of an exact clock or sundial.