Johnnie Millais made of most of the theatrical celebrities then engaged at Mr. Maddox's theatre in Oxford Street during his almost nightly visits to the house, both before and behind the scenes; for, be sure, after his introduction by Mr. Wallack, his brilliant ability with the brush carried him into everybody's favor. He was not more than sixteen or seventeen at this time, and I am betraying no secret when I say that it was a matter of some importance that he should begin to turn his grand artistic powers to account. Highly valued, too, are many of these same sketches, still retained by the descendants of the great actor, notably those of "Don Cæsar de Bazan," a character first introduced to the English public by Wallack at the Princess's.

Very vivid to me are the memories of those days, ancient history though they be. Even as I think over them

I can see my dear old young friend Johnnie Millais blustering and rattling into my father's dining-room on one of our sketching-club evenings, where, assembled round a powerful lamp on the table, some half dozen or so of the "H.B.'s" as we called ourselves, were grouped. Drawing-boards and sketching-blocks, with tumblers of water, color-boxes and SO forth, cumbered a space in front, for we were going to illustrate a subject on the proverbial plan in such assemblies, in two hours, and the subject was often fantastically inscribed on a sheet of paper

go on with that-work it ou elevation!-And Pip, my

old Pip to-night?-You are beginning, though-are you of course, I know. Ah! I s senators, a trial-something kind! Go on with thatright! Jolly long forear that chap has got! What a Let's see! Defence! defe where's this block, old boy getting on!"

Thus rattling away as he the table, criticizing, shak laughing, chaffing, expecting to wait upon him, do his b lend him everything he wa way of materials (as all wer do), he would sit down, n down, for he chattered and while he was drawing, his shuffling and stretching out i tions under the table. Whe called, no need to say whos best work; that goes witho Many and many were thes evenings in the winter whe in rotation, at each other's studios, the host of the even ing the sketches done unde Alas! myself and only one o ber of that merry crew are gering superfluous on the sta right merry we were beyon albeit Millais and Thomas W sculptor, long deceased, are names worth remembering, a of the famous "H.B." sket

By-the-bye, I should per

add that it was at one of the very earliest of these pleasant gatherings that the impetuous youngster made his celebrated remark about smoking, already quoted; and that it was at quite one of the latest that the word "Defence" was the subject of the evening. Happily his illustration of it is still accessible, as it is in the possession of Henry Lucas, Esq., of Bramblehurst, East Grinstead.

Memories, too, I have of him when bright weather and long days lured some of our coterie into the then rural and picturesque suburbs of London. At North End, Hampstead, where my father and mother occupied rooms in a farmhouse during the summer of 1848, Millais was a constant visitor. He would come down ostensibly for a day's sketching, generally failing to bring any materials of his own. I had to supply these, of course, and did so gladly, seeing the many brilliant little relics he frequently left behind. As a sample we may take the sketch in water-color of my dear dad standing in the garden, under which he printed with his brush the words "Varmer Venn;" and a corresponding one, still slighter, of my mother seated on a sofa. Slight as they are, the character and likeness is simply admirable in both instances. Both sketches are still in my possession.

I was a bit of a “dab” with a leapingpole in those days, and the broken ground on the slopes of the Heath offering splendid oportunities for the exhibition of this form of athleticism, you may be sure Master Johnnie spent not a little of the day in restless displays of hurtling leaps and bounds with my pole.

Richmond Park, again, frequently attracted him when he heard two or three H.B.'s were bent on a sketching expedition there, and many were the beautiful bits of sylvan landscape his vigorous brush produced: whilst the

picnic luncheons we sometimes indulged in amongst the rich, dense ferns and oaks were not the least part of our day's fun; and the journeys out and home on the top of the omnibus formed glorious episodes in these summer excursions.

The Thames below bridge, Greenwich, and Greenwich Park and Hospital supplied endless excuses for these outings, and my only regret is that I did not then know how interesting might have proved some of the details of the doings of our young Titan, had I taken more accurate note of them.

Many years after all this I have a very vivid memory of him in Glenfinlas, where he was painting the famous portrait of Ruskin. I chanced to be staying at the Brig o' Turk with my very old friend Mike Halliday, a strange, oddlooking little fellow, but one of the very best and truest-hearted gentlemen who ever painted a bad picture! He was a clerk in the House of Lords, but an enthusiast in art; and very soon after he and Millais first met at my father's house, he became one of Millais's most intimate friends. He is the Michael referred to in the deer-stalking letter quoted above, and was the original of Leech's "Tom Noddy."

Well, he and I were on a sketching tour, and we came across Millais in the glen-a tall figure laden with brushes and art paraphernalia. He led us to his tent pitched amongst the boulders of the torrent, and labelled in big charcoal letters for a joke "Great Pre-Raphaelite Emporium." Beneath its broad, open front stood the easel bearing the most original portrait of our times.

Ruskin, at that period, was busy writing his "Lectures on Architecture," Millais illustrating them with superb designs; but he would stroll up the glen and take his stand for the painter as we know him in the picture, grasp

ing a shred of pine-branch, all in the flash of the water and the wet rocks. Mrs. Ruskin, afterwards Lady Millais, would escort the party and watch progress, protected from the sun and showers by one of the enormous mushroom hats in vogue at that date for country wear, which made her small, pretty figure look somewhat elf-like. Great was our wonder and admiration as the work advanced, and we were Millais's willing fags, he frequently desiring pipes and tobacco and all sorts of things while at his labor, and the village being distant.

a

As I watched I was chiefly struck with the rapid certainty of his execution, a fact evident in the clear freshness of the picture, and its mirror-like impression on the beholder. In those days he merely rendered all he saw like a camera, and left the theories to Ruskin, who was indeed a perfect fountain of precept. My own tendencies being towards Cox and Constable, the Professor gave my work rather trampling criticism. On one occasion for my benefit he drew a bit of a mountain-side with trees and boulders, of which I had made a rough, sloppy sketch. "Observe," said he to me, "this is how Harding would render it, and this is how Turner would do it. Mark how conventional and mean is the one; see how true and great is the other." I kept the slip of paper, of course, feeling much honored by its possession, though I took this fine opportunity of holding my tongue.

To hark back for a moment to earlier days, I may say Millais painted a fine small portrait of my father in his early style, before the P.R.B. mania seized him; and I only refer to it as it crosses my mind amongst these desultory memories, because it is a striking example of the marvellous aptitude which he ever displayed in catching a likeness. Volunteering Millais never quite took Of course he joined the Artists'

to.

Rifle Corps directly it was embodied, and I can see him in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with Leighton, Val Prinsep, J. B. Burgess, Stacy Marks, Robert Edis, Antony Salvin, W. B. Richmond, Vicat Cole, Carl Haag, Horace Jones, Field Talfourd, and a score or two more of rising or risen painters, architects, engineers, actors, musicians, authors, journalists, etc. This was when we were beginning our preliminary drills in plain clothes at the Hanover Square rooms and in Burlington Gardens, the site now occupied by the Royal Academy, and when the "goose-step," "balance step without gaining ground," and other rudimentary motions were all the calls made upon our "understandings." These amused our hero somewhat, and there was a good deal of chuckling at the various mistakes and mishaps which befell the civilian soldiery; but he tired of it soon, I suspect, and was at any rate very irregular in his attendances. When rifles were first served out, and our fine-looking sergeant-major of the Guards instructed us in the manual and platoon exercises, he displayed a flash of enthusiasm; but it was not sustained. The handling of the weapon and examining it-the "gaspipe," as we used to call it in the days of ramrods and before breechloaders were known-was all very well, and created a passing interest generally, in which Millais shared only to a partial extent. However this may be, I have no recollection of Millais in uniform; in fact, I don't think he ever did more than order one, even if he did that. The discipline, loose though it was in all conscience at that date, seemed to irk him; it was not consonant with his painter's disposition, and besides it made too long-drawn demands upon his time, hard worker that he was, especially after his family increased as it was rapidly doing by 1860. No; beyond a few visits to the camp at Wimbledon in the year his great friend Joe

Jopling won the Queen's Prize, and a few shots at the targets at various ranges, soldiering did not suit him, and he very soon, I suspect, vanished from the ranks of the active volunteers. I have gone through several books of "carte-de-visite" portraits of my friends of that period which I still possess, and where they figure both in warpaint and in mufti, and I can find no picture of Millais either in full-dress or undress uniform, though I possess one of him in civilian's dress. Albeit he had then been married some six or eight years, the air of Bohemia still environed him and clung to him, on some occasions, as his natural artistic breath of life.

When the Arts Club, however, was instituted by some of the leading men in the volunteer corps, Leighton and Millais were both eager and warm adherents, and constant frequenters of "Sweet Seventeen," as we dubbed the dear old house in Hanover Square where for upwards of thirty years the Arts Club flourished amazingly, until freeholds or leaseholds or "someholds" that I don't understand loosened its hold and obliged it to remove itself to Dover Street. Millais and Leighton both remained members until the days of their deaths, although perhaps neither of late years was a very constant visitor, except on special occasions. Notably one of these was a dinner which the club gave to Leighton on his accession to the presidentship of the Royal Academy, when Millais was in the chair. It was only late in life that Millais developed into a good afterdinner speaker; and although perhaps never becoming very eloquent, he yet displayed a happy knack of saying the right thing in the right place in an agreeably colloquial manner. I recall vividly the example he gave of his ability at that self-same banquet to his dear old friend and fellow-artist. On that occasion, too, it was that he first

publicly told the story of what Thackeray said to him on his return from Rome about the young English painter whom the author of "Vanity Fair" had met there, and "who will oblige you, Millais my boy, to look to your laurels."

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Another side to my memories of Millais must not be omitted, loth as I am to intrude my personality into them. I am bound to speak of the deep, affectionate and sympathetic gard he displayed towards me, and of the great and practical exertion he made for my substantial benefit when it became known amongst the troops of good friends of whom I can boast of having, and having had, that I should no longer be able to earn my living as a painter. The movement that was made on my behalf in the Royal Academy, and much of the success which attended my friends' exertions in other and private directions, were largely due to Millais and Halliday; and when I began to try in some sort to compensate myself by my own exertions for the deprivations which my infirmity inflicted on me, no one encouraged me more than my sympathetic old friend, John Everett Millais. I may be permitted, therefore, I hope, to wind up these recollections of the domestic and social side of his life with the following letter. It refers to the collection in book form of some of my contributions to various magazines and journals of the day in the volumes I entitled "Blind Man's Holiday:"

"2 Palace Gate, Kensington,

"Jan. 1, 1879. "Dear Fenn,-I have very nearly read through both books with such real pleasure that I will not delay congratulating you heartily on your success. I have already spoken highly of the volumes, and hope to obtain

It is understood that the Coronation, which will be the chief event of next year's season, is to be considerably shorn of its ancient glories, therein following the precedent set by William IV and accepted by the late Queen. There has been some grumbling at the definite abandonment of the procession from the Tower to the Abbey and the banquet in Westminster Hall, but most people will agree that things are better as they are. The reason why the change was made seventy years ago is well known. George IV's love of ostentation and profuse expenditure had thoroughly sickened his subjects, who were not in the least edified by such a ceremonial as Scott has recorded in a famous letter, with the unhappy Queen clamoring at the door which had been closed on her as much by her husband's neglect as by her own folly. Greville tells us that when William IV came to the throne it was decided that the Coronation was "to be confined to the ceremony in the Abbey and cost as little money and as little trouble as possible." It was thus found possible to bring the estimates within £30,000, whereas in the previous reign they had amounted to £240,000. "The Coronation went off well," wrote Greville,

"and whereas nobody was satisfied before it, everybody was after it." It is not likely that the ancient pageants or the Coronation banquet will ever again be instituted, although it is understood that the King, who is wisely anxious to gratify any reasonable wish in his subjects, will allow himself to be seen by as many of them as possible on the way to the Abbey. Thus the Court of Claims, which sat this week for the purpose of adjudicating on the right of certain subjects to take part in the ancient, reverend and picturesque ceremonies of the Coronation, has found its labors greatly lightenedhow greatly only those versed in the history of land-tenures can guess, though others may now read it at large in the handsome and learned volume of "English Coronation Records" (Constable & Co., 31s. 6d. net) which has just been edited by Mr. Leopold G. Wickham Legg, of New College, Oxford. Mr. Legg's aim was to collect "a series of documents which will give the consecutive history of the Coronation in England, from the earliest times down to the Coronation of Queen Victoria." It is very interesting to notice the persistence of the general form of the Coronation through all the