The moral aspects of his character appear in this memoir in an admirable light. If he did not stand so high as some others in public notoriety, it was mainly because, to stand higher than he did, he must plant his feet on a _bad_ eminence. His patriotism was as pure as Cromwell's was selfish. Mr. Dixon, his biographer, alludes to the strong points of contrast, as well as of resemblance between the two men. Both, he says, were sincerely religious, undauntedly brave, fertile in expedients, irresistible in action. Born in the same year, they began and almost closed their lives at the same time. Both were country gentlemen of moderate fortune; both were of middle age when the revolution came. Without previous knowledge or professional training, both attained to the highest honors of their respective services. But there the parallel ends. Anxious only for the glory and interest of his country, Blake took little or no care of his personal aggrandizement. His contempt for money, his impatience with the mere vanities of power, were supreme. Bribery he abhorred in all its shapes. He was frank and open to a fault; his heart was ever in his hand, and his mind ever on his lips. His honesty, modesty, generosity, sincerity, and magnanimity were unimpeached. Cromwell's inferior moral qualities made him distrust the great seaman; yet, now and then, as in the case of the street tumult at Malaga, he was fain to express his admiration of Robert Blake. The latter was wholly unversed in the science of nepotism, and "happy family" compacts; for, although desirous of aiding his relatives, he was jealous of the least offense on their part, and never overlooked it. Several instances of this disposition are on record. When his brother Samuel, in rash zeal for the Commonwealth, ventured to exceed his duty, and was killed in a fray which ensued, Blake was terribly shocked, but only said: "Sam had no business there." Afterward, however, he shut himself up in his room, and bewailed his loss in the words of Scripture: "Died Abner as a fool dieth!" His brother Benjamin, again, to whom he was strongly attached, falling under suspicion of neglect of duty, was instantly broken, and sent on shore. "This rigid measure of justice against his own flesh and blood, silenced every complaint, and the service gained immeasurably in spirit, discipline, and confidence." Yet more touching was the great admiral's inexorable treatment of his favorite brother Humphrey, who, in a moment of extreme agitation, had failed in his duty. The captains went to Blake in a body, and argued that Humphrey's fault was a neglect rather than a breach of orders, and suggested his being sent away to England till it was forgotten. But Blake was outwardly unmoved, though inwardly his bowels did yearn over his brother, and sternly said: "If none of you will accuse him, I must be his accuser." Humphrey was dismissed from the service. It is affecting to know how painfully Blake missed his familiar presence during his sick and lonely passage homeward, when the hand of death was upon that noble heart. To Humphrey he bequeathed the greater part of the property which he left behind him. In the rare intervals of private life which he enjoyed on shore, Blake also compels our sincere regard. When released for awhile from political and professional duties, he loved to run down to Bridgewater for a few days or weeks, and, as his biographer says, with his chosen books, and one or two devout and abstemious friends, to indulge in all the luxuries of seclusion. "He was by nature self-absorbed and taciturn. His morning was usually occupied with a long walk, during which he appeared to his simple neighbors to be lost in profound thought, as if working out in his own mind the details of one of his great battles, or busy with some abstruse point of Puritan theology. If accompanied by one of his brothers, or by some other intimate friend, he was still for the most part silent. Always good-humored, and enjoying sarcasm when of a grave, high class, he yet never talked from the loquacious instinct, or encouraged others so to employ their time and talents in his presence. Even his lively and rattling brother Humphrey, his almost constant companion when on shore, caught, from long habit, the great man's contemplative and self-communing gait and manner; and when his friends rallied him on the subject in after-years, he used to say, that he had caught the trick of silence while walking by the admiral's side in his long morning musings on Knoll Hill. A plain dinner satisfied his wants.