hibition in Edinburgh in 1862, where it was sent for sale by Rossetti from his then address in Chatham Place, Blackfriars; and that this drawing was referred to as an early" trial" of the subject he had chosen for a great painting of modern life, namely, the still unfinished Found, based, as mentioned under date 1853, upon verses in Mr. William Bell Scott's fine ballad called Mary Anne. This painting the artist intended should be an exemplification at once of his power to deal with a modern subject in art, as in poetry he did in his poem called Jenny, and to exhibit at a high point what he considered the essentially dramatic bent of his genius. The subject is the old familiar one of love ruined and gone astray, and at last overtaken with the hardest of all retributions. Against an ivy-covered graveyard wall, in the wan light of a London dawn and the pale unreal gleam of the still lighted lamps upon the bridge, cowers a girl whose face is almost hidden by her dishevelled golden hair and her shielding hands; and in front of her stands a countryman, of a somewhat too idealised type it may be to impress with unmistakable reality, but still not unreal, who clasps one of her arms in his hand and stoops to lift her from the weary misery of her degradation. He has come in from the sweet-smelling country, with the fragrant hay and the roses and honeysuckles in the hedges vying with each other for predominance, where all was pure and still, life being yet present in the innumerable larks in full song and in the linnets and chaffinches in the beech and ash trees by the white roadside, and the smoke from an early cottar's fire rising up in curling blue films above the distant elms surrounding some farm-house; and having at last entered the town, with his cart containing the calf he has brought for the

market, he has crossed the Thames by one of its numerous bridges and is arrested in his progress by the sight of the unfortunate girl crouching before him. He has not yet seen her face, but she has recognised in him the man who loved her in what seems to her long ago, and to whom she was betrothed; but the sight of her not only touches the manly pity and chivalry of his nature but also strikes a chord of bitter but forgiving memory in his heart when he thinks of one young and beautiful like this poor girl, of whose fate he is unaware. Persistent in his brotherly kindness, he endeavours to raise the girl from her crouching position, and at last with a despairing look she returns his gaze, and in a moment the world seems dark to him again, darker even than on that day when he first learned that his betrothed had been unfaithful to him and had fled with her betrayer. The sestet of the sonnet tells us nothing further than that upon both hearts flashed the sudden and bitter memory of those gloaming hours when "under one mantle sheltered 'neath the hedge" they pled to each other their mutual troth; that he in the agonising moment of recognition only knows he holds her again, but alas, "what part can life now take?"-while she in her misery can only with inaudible lips sob out, "Leave me-I do not know you!"

As will be recognised at once, the subject is a highly dramatic one, and it must be admitted that the artist has succeeded in giving it a dramatic representation, although the moment he has chosen for illustration is not that of recognition on the man's part, but where he stoops in pity over the golden-haired Magdalene. The painting of the picture as far as it is finished is very thorough, especially notable being the calf in the rough

country cart, the attitude of the cowering girl against the ivy-covered brick wall, and the pale flaming of the gas jets on the bridge against the cold wan blue light of advancing dawn: indeed, these gas gleams turning pale "in London's smokeless resurrection light" are amongst the best technical work of the artist, recalling a parallel passage in Jenny, where a natural truth is happily expressed :—

"Glooms begin

To shiver off as lights creep in

Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,

And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue."

It is greatly to be regretted that this work is still unfinished, as a short period devoted to it entirely would have accomplished all that was necessary; but this was not to be, for in a quiet churchyard near the sea rest the fertile hand and mind of him who has so enriched and ennobled English art as well as English literature.

With the picture of Found and the year 1882 ends this record, not indeed quite exhaustive, but as complete as is practicable so soon after the artist's death, and under the circumstances of the wide and frequently unrecorded distribution of the pictures, drawings, and designs. If the amount of imaginative conceptions and the general technical mastership have been rendered realisable to the reader unacquainted with the work of the great artist whose death we have all so recently deplored, one of the main objects of this narration will have been accomplished; and it may be that it may help towards the clearing away of false impressions in the minds of some, towards enlarging and increasing the sympathetic admiration of others, and serving

collectors and those interested in art as the substantial basis of a possibly more complete and exact record. One can infer and gather much from a literary record, but one cannot judge from such alone; but I am certain that the majority of those who have read the foregoing pages, and are at the same time in at least some measure acquainted with the artist's work, will not hesitate in believing one of the greatest names in the history of English art to be that of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

(At the end of this volume will be found a Supplementary List giving as accurately and exhaustively as I have found practicable the dates of execution, subjects, mediums, states, and present owners of everything mentioned in the foregoing record, with any others which for various reasons I may not have been able to specify. No trouble has been spared to make it as reliable and complete as lay in my power, with the assistance of many concerned, to accomplish.)

ADDENDA TO CHAPTER III.

AMONGST those designs and pictures which I have for different reasons been unable to specify in the foregoing chapter are the following, some of whose dates are still conjectural. I may as well state here that if any difference be anywhere observable between the text and the Supplementary List the latter is to be taken as the correct information, it having undergone the closest revision down to the final proof. Amongst other designs executed for glass should have been mentioned that entitled King Rene's Honeymoon, which is in Mr. Birket Foster's residence in Surrey; and amongst panel paintings one in a large cabinet belonging to Mr. J. P. Seddon, representing a lady in blue playing an organ and a youth clothed in red leaning thereover, probably a St. Cecily design. Amongst unfulfilled early designs for pictures should have been mentioned one of Fra Angelico painting and one of Giorgione painting, both belonging to Mr. Madox Brown, and an interesting study in pencil founded on the story of Dorothy and Theophilus, in connection with which readers of Mr. Swinburne's Poems and Ballads will recollect an enlargement of the theme in verse. Mr. J. P. Seddon has also several other pencil sketches and studies, but the latter are too incomplete to specify. In 1853 Rossetti executed a very fine pencil head of his father, exactly a year before the latter's death, and on this drawing a wood-engraving, which appeared in a biographical series of eminent Italians published at Turin, has been founded, but in a most unsatisfactory manner, giving no idea of the delicacy and beauty as well as the detail of the original. Mr. J. Mitchell has a highly-finished water-colour painted about 1863, regarding which the artist wrote:-"The drawing of Brimfull had its origin merely from my seeing a lady stoop to sip from a very full wine-glass before lifting it to her lips. The reflection in the glass is intended for that of a gentleman dining with her, who would be seated on the front side of the table