'less than 113,000l.' In bananas alone 'the export dropped 'from 14,660,582 stems to 7,803,243,' or, 'in estimated ' value from 1,134,750l. to 585,2431.' As to houses, there is a pretty wide belief that they are frequently blown up, or out, by the air inside forcibly expanding when the pressure of the air outside is diminished. M. Doberck thinks that this is unfounded-that the air inside is never so closely confined as to be independent of that outside. In the case of typhoons he is probably right, but there have been undoubted instances of buildings bursting in the way described, when exposed to the extraordinary and sudden rarefaction of the air in the centre of one of those small whirls of extreme violence, one of which passed over Walmer in 1878,* and which are not uncommon in the United States of America, where they are known as 'tornados.' The damage to houses done by typhoons is more probably caused by the breaking in of doors or windows, and so introducing the tremendous pressure of the storm. In this way a very great deal of damage can be done, though perhaps not so much by the typhoons of the Far East as by the hurricanes of the West Indies, where on such occasions Eolus and his satellites hold wild revelry.

* Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, vol. viii. p. 3.

No life was ever more devoid of summing evenTS ADO SUCKING episodes than Barne-Jones's. Not only were there no outward vicissitudes; there were no vildent ward crises or conflicts. The artist's vocation distosed itself quietly and rather tardily; but, when it did ocene, it came mistake ably, and it never dimmed or watered afterwards. Throughout his childish days, his school days, his Oxford days, and the long years of his work in London, there were no breaks or dislocations, no adventures or catastrophes. From the first he moved, it seemed, along a path prepared for his feet. But if the life was unmarked by events of importance, it has the deeper interest of being linked to a purpose and a movement of the age-a purpose of recognised signi ficance, which has had far-reaching effects, which claims attention and inquiry still, and the leaders and directors of which were some of the most prominent men in the art and literature of the time. It is in bringing us in contact with this movement and these men that the present memoirs find their source of interest. But the force and effect with which that interest comes home is owing largely to the way in which Lady Burne-Jones has accomplished her task of writing them. With an instinctive literary tact, Lady Burne-Jones is able to see her task from the point of view of the reader, and to keep to that point of view throughout. She realises that the public is very much interested in the events of Burne-Jones's life, in his friendships, opinions, judgements, and the like; but that it is not so deeply interested in, and is, indeed, apt to be impatient of, anyone else's comments on these matters. And, realising this important fact, she hands us, so to speak, each circumstance as it occurs, allowing it to speak for itself, keeping herself in the background, or only offering such amount of quiet explanation as may be necessary.

A further gift, too, and one invaluable in memoir writing, the gift of passing naturally from topic to topic without ever getting entangled in the subject, of letting a narrative composed of many disconnected circumstances slip easily through one's fingers, is possessed by Lady Burne-Jones in no common degree. These chapters are elaborated on no particular plan, but flow of their own

accord. There are no attempts to trace the developement of genius, to distinguish between 'periods,' to analyse the effect of one character upon another, and the various influences brought to bear on the artist's imagination or style. The only arrangement is the natural sequence of time. The daily events of Burne-Jones's life were often interesting because they were concerned with very interesting people. Morris, Rossetti, Ruskin, Madox Brown, Swinburne, Tennyson, Browning, Holman Hunt, Watts, are some of the more notable people who stroll in and out of these pages, and meet as familiarly in them as fifty years ago they met in real life. We are not to expect, in Lady Burne-Jones's treatment of them, those flashes of insight which touch the quick of character and convey an indelible impression in a stroke or two, but rather a description of familiar traits and ordinary appearances and everyday comings and goings-of visits, plans, expeditions, jokes, anecdotes, nicknames, and the like, which, slight as they may seem, have their own significance, and often afford a clue or suggest a meaning beyond themselves, and which in the present work are handled with such ease that their interest seems to detach itself freely and spontaneously, and the attention of the reader is never for a moment wearied.

For several reasons Burne-Jones's Oxford days seem to us the most interesting of his life. It was at Oxford he first came under the influence of Rossetti's work. It was at Oxford he made friends with Morris. It was at Oxford his own vocation was made clear to him and the course mapped out which he was to follow to the end. But, beyond this personal interest, the comradeship between him and Morris, the contrast in character between the two, and the divergent lines they took from this common Oxford starting-point, throw a ray of light on the Pre-Raphaelite movement itself. Each embodied an aspect of that movement, and in understanding them we seem the better to understand the nature of Pre-Raphaelitism.

Until he went to Oxford, and, indeed, nearly up to the time of his leaving it, Burne-Jones's artistic genius was almost unsuspected. At school his drawing attracted no notice. 'Might do better if he exhibited more industry,' was all that his drawing-master could find to say for him at sixteen. His early letters, on the other hand, bear the impress of a character with some turn for literature, and at about the time of the unfavourable report on his drawing we find him, with the ambition of that time of life, planning

an Ancient History' and, in conjunction with Cormell Price, a Universal History for the Use of Students.' Later, at Oxford he bore a chief hand, under Morris, in the starting of the magazine which was to be the mouthpiece of the 'Brotherhood.' His work in it was twofold. He was to supply the needed illustrations, and also write articles. His literary contributions to the first number were a story called 'The Corsair' and an essay on 'The Newcomes.' Of the first of these Canon Dixon recalls how, on hearing it read out, the little band of contributors' were as if struck 'dumb at the end of it. I felt,' he adds, 'the commanding 'beauty and delicate phrasing, and also the goodness of 'heart that the writing showed. I had no notion before 'that E. B.-J. was gifted so highly for literature.'

There seems, then, to have been in those early days a doubt whether painting or writing would claim most of his attention. It must be remembered that up to this time Burne-Jones had seen practically no pictures at all. The various means of reproduction which to-day carry some knowledge of art into every town and village in the country did not then exist. The taste of the age was nurtured on the pompous sentiment and dull conventionalism of the Early Victorians. For an artistic genius like Burne-Jones's, a genius very impressionable, needing sympathy to draw it out, imaginative, and profoundly romantic, no atmosphere could have been more chilling. It was small wonder that under such circumstances he should have failed to recognise his vocation early, or that the prospect of devoting himself with 'industry' to a profession which promised such results as were then visible seemed uninviting. Many years later, when an art museum for Birmingham was being proposed, he declared, himself, If there had been one cast from 'ancient Greek sculpture, or one faithful copy of a great 'Italian picture, to be seen in Birmingham when I was a 'boy, I should have begun to paint ten years before I did.'

It was at Oxford the determining influence came. Only five years separated Burne-Jones from Rossetti; but besides that five years, when the ages are twenty and twenty-five, count for a good deal, the elder man had in his nature far more power and originality than the younger. Rossetti, indeed, with his virile and penetrating genius, his masterfulness, his scorn of conventionality, was the very leader BurneJones needed, the leader he had been waiting for, and whose coming it seemed was necessary to disclose to him his own vocation. 'The Maids of Elfinmere,' just published in

Allingham's Day and Night Songs,' was the first of Rossetti's works seen by his future disciple. It made an instant impression. He had already seen Millais's Return of the 'Dove to the Ark,' and had hailed it with the cry, and 'these we knew.' But it was Rossetti's influence that captured him. 'I feel it is possible,' writes Lady BurneJones, to lay one's finger on his earliest work and say, "This was done before and this after he had seen the """Maids of Elfinmere.'

Burne-Jones joined the University in 1853, at the same time as William Morris. It was the moment, as the reader knows, of a strange stirring and awakening in English art. The new spirit abroad in the land was of a kind to appeal with extraordinary force to young imaginations. Never, perhaps, has a movement so, in a sense, narrow, so concentrated in its aim, been supported by such all-round genius. Ruskin was thirty-four years old. The first volumes of 'Modern Painters' and 'The Seven Lamps' had appeared within the last few years. The Stones of Venice' was just coming out. Holman Hunt, Rossetti, and Millais were twenty-six, twenty-five, and twenty-four respectively. Their exhibition of a picture apiece at the Academy four years before had definitely launched the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Tennyson's poetry, with its warmth of sentiment and romance, was in strict alliance with it. Tennyson, Ruskin, Rossetti ! Championed by such a poet, such a preacher, and such a painter the movement was well calculated to stir the enthusiasm of the rising generation. A 'Brotherhood' gathered at Oxford in imitation of the Brotherhood of London, and a magazine was published answering to 'The Germ.' Vague revolutionary strains filled the air, and Fulford, Faulkner, Dixon, Morris, Cormell Price, and Burne-Jones himself were among those who marched to their music. Lady BurneJones, whose brother was at this time at Oxford, and a friend of Burne-Jones's, and who knew most of the Brotherhood, describes with what eagerness its doings were followed and its enthusiasm shared by mothers and sisters at home:

"That we thought them good,' she writes, 'goes without saying. Some of us chose Fulford, some Edward, some Cormell Price for lodestar. I did not know Dixon and Faulkner sufficiently well at that time to see their reflection in the eyes that followed them. My brother had several very dear women and girl friends, besides his mother and sisters, nor do I doubt that each one of the Brotherhood was blessed in the thoughts of some heart, known or unknown to himself.