Then all the things that religion has repressed spring up and flourish. The pristine fiery joy, once perverted to ten commands, burns through all obstructions, and, as a flame of life, leaps to life, rejoicing in all living things, even in the harlot who remains undefiled, "though ravished in her cradle night and morn." And man walks amidst the lustful fires unconsumed. The fires serve to make his feet "become like brass, his knees and thighs like silver, and his breast and head like gold." Blake exulted in his vision and proclaimed it in unfaltering tones because he knew that "the soul of sweet delight can never be defiled." Here he adds a touch or two to his vision of sex in _The Vision of the Daughters of Albion_, and he reaches its heart. The _soul_ of sweet delight is eternally clean. Once a man has grasped this truth, and it may cost him much mental fight to reach it, then he is able to think and speak cleanly of the passion of love, he can go naked, like Adam in Eden, and the angels of the highest heaven, and know no touch of shame. There is much in modern literature and art that Blake would have detested, but he would have loved the soul of Sonia the undefiled harlot that Dostoieffski has revealed with such wonderful power in his _Crime and Punishment_. Blake followed the American conflict until "the British soldiers through the Thirteen States sent up a howl of anguish" and threw their swords and muskets to the earth. They were unable to stand before the flames of Orc; and since those flames had now reached to France, Blake dreamed that nothing could withstand their hungry course till the regeneration of the world should come. All this and much more is said in Blake's symbolical way. Here, as in _The French Revolution_, there are no portraits. The rebels of the States, and even Paine, are mere names, and much less real than the angels of the States who carry on the real business. These angels lived in an ancient palace built on the Atlantean hills between America and England. It is interesting to note these things, because the angels of the States are suggested by the angels of the Kingdoms in the apocalyptic book of Daniel, which Blake loved and instinctively understood, and the Atlanteans have always had an irresistible attraction for men of a theosophical turn of mind. Blake was a close student of the apocalyptic books of the Bible all his life; his knowledge of the Atlanteans probably came to him through his Rosicrucian readings. _America_ lets us see the profound admiration Blake felt towards Paine for his action in the American War. Later on we shall find him criticizing with some asperity the deism that his friend confessed. I must pass over Blake's other writings of this year, and merely recount that he again changed his residence, and went to live in Lambeth at 13 Hercules Buildings. Dr Samson says that it is now numbered 23, but authorities cannot agree whether it was this house or the next.