ten from Paris when Rossetti was twenty-one, contains other equally obstinate exaggerations, Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" being dismissed as "one of the most comic performances I ever saw in my life." These expressions of opinion are, however, little more than the wrong-headed outpourings of a P.R. propagandist. To pursue further the subject of Rossetti's progress towards maturity as a painter and art critic is a task not here set me. I should be inclined to say that Rossetti as a poetic designer never attained a higher level of excellence than in the triptych of "Paolo e Francesca," the conception of which must be relegated to the year 1849. The best version of the design is that in the collection of the late Mr. Leathart. It was painted nearly twenty years later, at the time when Rossetti was painting his most beautiful women's heads. Allowing him, therefore, to have attained his full power of poetic design by the time he was twenty-one, we must consider him as adding to his technical acquirements with greater or less rapidity according to the relative values one assigns to the pictures, let us say, of "Beata Beatrix" or the "Astarte Syriaca. It is, of course, only in their revelations of Rossetti's mental attitude towards his art that Rossetti's letters to his family are valuable as indicants of this side of his life. In Mr. William❘ Rossetti's very complete "Memoir" which precedes the letters themselves, we meet with one reason for the fewness of pictures with subjects that Rossetti executed. It was the very simple one that his patrons preferred to have him use his talents in the portrayal of surpassingly beautiful women. And so considerable was the demand for this species of design that, in his later years, wrote to Madox Brown complaining of the labor of assigning descriptive names to a large number of heads. Rossetti several times For the rest it is singular how lovable a man Rossetti appears in his letters here published, and it is not more than fair to say that, in his cor respondence with Madox Brown, which I have had occasion to study rather minutely, it is difficult to discover any. thing calculated to make an ordinary reader seriously dislike him. Of the two men who have attacked his person, the one, "Thomas Maitland," has recanted, and the other, the late W. B. Scott, has so liberally negatived the virtues of everybody with whom he came in contact that his Mephistophelian gibes would pass for little in any case. Mr. W. Rossetti has, however, so amply confuted most of his allegations that their negative value is increased in a considerable de-* gree. On the other hand, there is no possibility of denying that Rossetti had failings-or let us say one central failing-that obscured his later days and made him keep suspiciously aloof from nearly all his friends, besides rendering miserable every one interested in him. This would, of course, be rather a personal than a public matter were it not for the fact that Rossetti's working powers were terribly crippled by this chloral habit. In his memoir Mr. W. Rossetti has treated the subject minutely-one feels tempted to say too minutely-and with absolute candor. One of the chapters in the latter half of the book must, I think, be called one of the most painful in modern biography, but it is one which brings out very fully the fact that Rossetti's insomnia, use of chloral, and the incalculable consequent loss to the world of art, were almost entirely due to the reckless asseverations of the "Fleshly School" pamphlet. On the other hand, there is this to be said for Rossetti's indulgence in chloral. At the time when sleeplessness first attacked him chloral was introduced into the circle as an absolutely innocuous remedy, and Rossetti had habituated himself to its use before its ill effects were disclosed. At the lastand for some time before the lastthe habit was carried to such an extent that, as Rossetti himself put it, it became a commercial necessity—that is to say, want of chloral meant in somnia, and want of sleep powerless- | native land he was, and still is, revness to work. Various people made attempts to wean him of the habit, but achieved little in that direction. Madox Brown himself claimed to have reduced the quantity taken to a minimum. This he brought about partly by reasoning, partly by "bullying," and partly by clandestine adulteration, thus uniting the methods of other workers in the same cause. This was at Herne Bay and its neighborhood. The only nearly final result would seem to have been that Rossetti refused to see Madox Brown unless he refrained from troubling about the chloral question, and in the mean time "relapsed." It was on this occasion that he wrote the letter conveying the very reasonable views that I have repeated above. It is, indeed, pitched in as reasonable a key as possible, showing no trace of the morbid suspicions to which the use of the chloral rendered him susceptible. To turn to kindlier things. Few pleasanter pictures of a man's early family life are to be found than that presented to us in the earlier pages of the memoir. We observe in it all the elements of gentleness and joyousness that are to be found in the records of the Mendelssohn family. Scholarly elders, brilliant and talented children, the family cliquish associations and pursuits, are as present in the one as in the other, and are very similar in feature up to a certain point. In Mendelssohn's case, the surroundings were those of a wealthy semiJewish German family. Rossetti's were those of an Italian colony in a foreign but not uncongenial land. Rossetti's father was a man proscribed by the Naples Bourbons, and doomed to pass his life in a country where he "bought his climate at the coal merchant's," as he quaintly phrased it. But he did not repine, and he made his home a centre of the colony of Italian patriots then in London, making welcome any kind of compatriot, from men like Mazzini to the poorest of plaster-cast sellers. In his erenced as a poet of the Young Italy of his own day. In England he made his living by giving Italian lessons. He was, besides, a very learned student of Dante's works, with a "theory" of his own; and, as was only natural, the children regarded the great Florentine as a bugbear. Otherwise he was a man quite lacking in self-consciousness, though with no want of self-opinion, capable of warm attachments and of equally warm hatreds. When told of the death of his benefactor and friend Hookham Frere. "with tears in his half-sightless eyes and the passionate fervor of a southern Italian, my father fell on his knees and exclaimed: 'Anima bella, benedetta sii tu, dovunque sei.'" Here we have a picture of him in his more tranquil moments: "In all my earlier years I used frequently to see my father come home in the dusk, rather fagged with his round of teaching, and, after dining, he would lie down flat on the hearthrug close by the fire, and fall asleep for an hour or two, snoring vigorously. Beside him would stand up our old tabby cat, poised on her haunches and holding on by the fore-claws inserted into the fender wires, warming her furry front. Her attitude (I have never seen any feline imitation of it) was peculiar-somewhat in the shape of a capital Y. "The cat making the Y' was my father's phrase for this performance. She was the mother of a numerous progeny; one of her daughters—also long an inmate of our house was a black and white cat, named Zoe by my elder sister Maria, who had a fancy for anything Greekish; but Zoe never made a Y." Of English blood there was very little in Rossetti-what little there was being derived from a maternal greatgrandfather, who was born in 1736, and from similar rather distant sources. His maternal grandfather was a friend of Count Alfieri, and was present at the taking of the Bastille. During that day he had a sword thrust into his hand with the admonition: "Prenez, citoyen, combattez pour la patrie." Polidori, of self-consciousness - of that impulse course, was inclined for no such thing, and, after a moment's reflection, "I stuck it into the hand of the first unarmed person I met, and repeating, 'Prenez, citoyen, combattez pour la patrie,' I passed on and returned home." His son, Polidori, Rossetti's maternal uncle, was the same who accompanied Byron upon one of his voyages, and was the author of the "Vampyre," a work frequently but erroneously ascribed to Byron himself. Rossetti thus received poetic traditions from both sides of his family. His first artistic impulses were derived from the study of theatrical scenes of the kind then called familiarly the "penny plain, twopence colored," published by Skelt. At the age of five or thereabouts he began to illustrate scenes from Shakespeare, but his drawings had no merit of any kind. Nevertheless, from that time forward he seldom had a pencil or brush out of his hand, and in the family it was generally understood that "Gabriel meant to be a painter." His studies he pursued only in the direction that suited him. School he cordially disliked, only seeing the brutal cruelty of such sports as fisticuffs, and the unprofitability of other boyish pursuits. The academy schools he abandoned for Madox Brown's tuition, Madox Brown's for Mr. Holman Hunt's, and finally, gravitating along the line of least resistance, he found his métier in the very class of work which came easiest to him. His personal fascination was great, his physical attractiveness great, his eloquence extreme. It has been said that with his musical tongue he kept together for far longer than was natural the incongruous elements of the P.R. Brotherhood. I have heard it advanced that Rossetti was one of the most selfish of men, and this by an artist who knew him excellently. This may or may not have been the case, and yet his was certainly one of the most splendidly generous of natures. In either case the ruling spirit was an entire want of which leads one to preparatory analysis of one's action. If he set himself to attain an end, he did his best, and did not stay to consider the feelings of others. If, on the other hand, his sympathies were aroused, he spared neither his pocket nor his interest. From private but quite trustworthy sources I could instance innumerable cases of Rossetti's charity of a pecuniary kind, and very many in which he gave the highest proof of generosity that an artist can give-that of introducing rivals, and very considerable rivals, to his own patrons. I do not, of course, mean to say that this class of action was the special characteristic of Rossetti amongst the brethren, for it was one of the most pleasing features of the movement; but had Rossetti's nature been ungenerous, he would have proved himself an exception to the rule. That he was not is all the more remarkable when we consider in what a high degree Rossetti's business faculties were developed. The number of his friends, their warm attachment to him, and their various types, bear witness to his powers of attraction; and if we may believe that one man may influence another, we must hold that Rossetti's influence on his day was great, for among his intimate friends he numbered Ruskin, Millais, Holman Hunt, Burne Jones, George Meredith, William Morris, and Swinburne; among his acquaintance almost every writer of importance of the class lying between Tennyson and Browning, not to mention a whole host of lesser lights such as James Hannay or Dr. Hake. But whatever his influence were, it was an artistic rather than an ethical one, or rather than a scientific one. He was a synthete rather than an analyst. In that direction the line of delimitation was sharply drawn. On the other hand, his expression of his own philosophy, as we find it in the "Cloud Confines," was as finite and definite as Coleridge's was infinite and indefinite. For the rest, a word might be said about the person with whom Rossetti's name is most linked in the popular estimation-Miss Siddal, Mrs. D. G. Rossetti. This is how Mr. William Rossetti describes her: ... "Her character was somewhat singular, not quite easy to understand, and not at all on the surface. Often as I have been in her company, I hardly think that I ever heard her say a single thing indicative of her own character or of her serious underlying thought It [her speech] was like the speech of a person who wanted to turn off the conversation and leave matters substantially as they were before. She seemed to say, 'My mind and my feelings are my own, and no outsider is expected to pry into them.' That she had plenty of mind is a fact abundantly evidenced by her designs and water colors, and by her verses as well." Of her person: From The New Review. A NOBLE LADY. It has been recently said, and by one who has a right to speak on the subject, that every man who has produced one work of any worthy kind, has a right to a biography. We are inclined to go further even than Mr. Sidney Lee, and to pardon a great many tedious books out of sympathy with the human sentiment that does not willingly let any flower of human character or loveliness pass into oblivion without an attempt to keep its memory alive in the world from which it has passed. It is not a question of greatness or notoriety which makes the charm of biography. A certain position in the sight of men, and public performance that can be judged by ordinary rules, give a reason, or perhaps an excuse, for opening up the completed chapter, and enlarging the history of the world by an illustrative episode of "She was a most beautiful creature the history of an individual. But there with an air between dignity and sweet- are many among those who have taken ness, mixed with something which ex- no public position whatever, who have ceeded modest self-respect, and partook not called attention to themselves by of disdainful reserve; tall, finely formed, any act, even by any word audible to with a lofty neck, and regular yet some- the general mass, whose name has what uncommon features, greenish never been heard about the streets, nor blue, unsparkling eyes, large perfect set upon a title-page, nor inscribed on eyelids, brilliant complexion, and a a banner, of whom, when the last perlavish wealth of coppery golden hair." | fecting touch has been given, and the She won the admiration of almost little life has been rounded by that sleep every one with whom she came in con- in which human sentiment divines so tact, from Mr. Ruskin to Mr. Swin- much, and from which some of us exburne, and as the prototype of "Beata pect so bright an awaking-we are more Beatrix" figures as one of the stand- loth to lose sight than of the most ards of poetic beauty that our world famous among men and heroes. This knows to-day. little chapter is but a protest against the oblivion which is the lot of all, but which all of us would fain thrust aside for one moment, preserving from the lichens and mosses that creep over everything, here and there one ever sweet and melodious name. Rossetti's affection for her was very deep and lasting. It is not to be denied that after her death he attempted to console himself with other ladies' charms, but he frequently tried by spiritualists' means to converse with her spirit. He thought secrets might be wrested from the grave when two souls were as intimately connected as were his and that of his dead wife. Still we say, as we go, Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That we shall know one day. FORD M. HUEFFER. The name of Elizabeth, Lady Cloncurry, is that of a lady not yet a year dead, who had attained the great age which in many cases forestalls death by affording something of completeness to the existence which is finished for all active exertion before its absolute withdrawal from the scene. This was not, however, her case; for she was as living at eighty as many are at eighteen, as these great persons had been generally sa velvet, though they possessed the qualities of all these in their softness and brightness; they were only like themselves, better than any comparison. She had, however, a pretty notion, an affectation shall we say, that her best look was with those liquid brown eyescast down, and so she always was, when undergoing the necessary tortureof a photograph. Perhaps she was right, and the perfect form of the soft eyelid, always so pretty a feature, was more safely and easily secured than the lustre of the eye. She was small and light in person, and flitted about with endless vivacity and speed like a girl, or rather like a child. She was never No woman who has had a very long without a little bouquet, which it was life can justly be said, in any position, the pleasure of all pleasant young and least of all in the higher class, to be creatures about her to supply, attached unknown. Lady Cloncurry was one of with a black ribbon upon her breast; those of whom we say that she has and the bouquet was never, if she could known everybody in her day; and when help it, without one or other of those that has been so very long a day as sweet-smelling things, which Bacon's eighty years, how vast is the accu- princely genius has planted forever mulated acquaintance, if only that and round the house doors-principally, and no more, it is difficult to calculate. by choice, of a little geranium, insignifiThere was no one of distinction for the cant in flower, but delicious in its sweetlast half century that had not flitted smelling leafage, which to all who loved across her path one time or another-her is sacred to her name. Add to this statesman, warrior, poet, or sage. I little picture many quaint pockets in suspect in their moment of encounter, the black satin draperies, each one of |