elaborately affected-straining to express the feelings of a cockney who had never before seen a goose in his life, web-footed. You do not suppose these children in the "Chaplain's Daughter" are simple? They are as artificial as the Sistine Chapel, etc. These criminal children in the "Chaplain's Daughter" we do not recollect at the moment. But as to the artificiality of the figures in some of Walker's most celebrated pictures there is truth in the criticism. Walker evolved from his in ner consciousness a "noble peasant," with a superior walk and demeanor; a typical form of him is the boy in "Wayfarers," a boy who was certainly never met with on the highroad as a tramp in real life, any more than the laborer walking through the foreground in "The Old Gate." Still less did we ever see in real life the man who hangs on the plough-tail in "The Plough," or the action and attitude of the lad who walks beside the horses. But it may be replied that Walker was not, in these pictures, aiming at the representation of real life. He could be simple and real enough when he chose, as in "Spring," or in that beautiful and touching design for the illustration of "Philip in Church" for Thackeray's story. But we take it that in such pictures as "The Plough" or "Wayfarers" he was idealizing the figures sciously and with a reasonable motive. "The Plough" especially was an allegory of the weariness of labor, and an impersonal and typical character was therefore given to the figures; they are sufficiently near to real life to awaken our sympathy, but sufficiently idealized to lift the whole into a more poetic region. Will any one say that "The Plough" would be improved or heightened in effect by substituting for the actual figures the realistic representation of such a ploughman as we may meet any day in the fields? Hardly we think. Walker very likely did not reason thus, for as far as appears he never did reason about his art; but his genius led him right. The mower in "The Harbor of Refuge" is a more difficult point, because the other figures in the picture, especially the group of old con men, are realistic, and this is certainly an idealized mower. But it is a matter for feeling and instinct rather than logic. We propose the same test as in the case of "The Plough;" would you wish Walker to have painted out that figure and substituted a faithful study from the man who mows your lawn? Few people would have any doubt as to the answer. The life and letters of Rossetti are those of a man who, unlike Walker, had a great deal to say about his own art and that of other people, and there is a good deal that is of interest in the letters here and there, but also a great deal that is not, and which was not in the least worth reprinting. What can be the possible object of putting on record such a letter as this, for instance? Sunday, July 2, 1871. Whitley Stokes has come from India, and stays only a very short time in London. He is to dine with me Wednesday at 7. I hope you can come, as I am sure he would like to see you again. cer This has the merit of brevity, tainly, but there are much longer letters which are of as little general interest. On the other hand, Rossetti's comments on the works of art seen in his not very numerous expeditions are lively, earnest, and of considerable interest. His curious fancy of putting his observations on persons and landscape, during his journey from London to Paris, into what may be called prointo the saic verse, remarks thrown form of metre in a loose careless way, were worth reprinting; they have no literary value as poems (a rather strange remark to have to make about any verse of Rossetti's), but they form an interesting record of the impressions of a quick and observant intellect, though rather disagreeably permeated by a perpetual discontent with things around him. The impression left by the two volumes is not a very pleasant one. In the first place, one cannot but be struck with the concentrated self sufficiency of the whole coterie of which Rossetti was the leading figure; their persuasion of the supreme impor tance of their own affairs and their pressing their contempt for all painting own views of art and life, and their crudely expressed contempt for every one else. All the pros and cons of Buchanan's exaggerated and unworthy attack on Rossetti under a feigned signature in the article on the "Fleshly School of Poetry" are debated through page after page, as if the matter were of interest to any one now. It has already been suggested in our pages, however, in we hope more moderate and reasonable language, that the tone of some of Rossetti's poetry is open to a criticism of the kind; not that there is any special poem which we can blame him for having written, but that the "House of Life" sonnets, if we look below the splendid diction and imagery to the real tendency of the thought in them, embody a view of life which is essentially sensuous and decadent. But we are not here considering Rossetti as a poet, and may dismiss that portion of the subject with the remark that, with whatever reservations, we are inclined to think that his greatest gift lay in poetry, and that he would have done wisely to have spent more of his strength in poetical production instead of placing it, as we think he (and perhaps his friends) did, as a secondary alternative to painting. The impression conveyed by the memoir is that Rossetti in his earlier days, and before he fell into the unhappy habits which unquestionably shortened his life, was not by any means the kind of dreamy and sensitive being which the style and feeling of most of his poems would have led one to expect. He was apparently a hearty, vigorous kind of man, who entered strenuously both into work and amusement, and was at once a staunch friend, an enthusiastic admirer, and a good hater. But there was an element of coarseness about his character, showing itself in various small characteristics, among others of language. His favorite word for paintings that did not please him is "slosh" or "filthy slosh;" though we rather believe that this objectionable kind of slang was adopted also by others of the P.R.B. set, as a mode of ex outside their own ideals. His pet name for Miss Siddal, who became his wife, was "Guggum," and Mrs. Hueffer, who as a child sat for one of his pictures, remembers him standing before the easel solacing himself over his work by a constant repetition of "Guggum, Guggum." The ménage does not seem to have been a very comfortable one, and Rossetti's remorse at her death led him to bury the manuscripts of his poems in her coffin, saying, "I have often been writing these poems when Lizzie was ill and suffering, and I might have been attending to her, and now they shall go." That is a feeling that we can honor and sympathize with; but it gives one rather a shock to find that, six or seven years after, the poet, repenting of this act and desiring to establish a literary reputation, had his wife's coffin exhumed and opened and the manuscripts taken out again from among the poor corrupted remains. It is inconceivable to us how any man who had loved and lost a wife could endure to do so loathsome a thing. Some people will say, no doubt, "Was it not better so than that such poems should be lost to the world?" Well, there are some things in life even more important than poetry; and we hope many persons will feel that, were the poet a relation of theirs or one in whom they were closely interested, they would tea times rather that his poems should have been lost, than that they should have been recovered by an action so utterly at variance with delicacy of feeling and reverence for the dead. As to the sad accounts of Rossetti's latter days, the utter subversion of his will under the influence of stupendous doses of chloral and wholesale spirit-drinking, it is not the first time that men of true genius have fallen into that slough; but we cannot see why it should all be written down fifteen years afterwards. Why not have Jet it be forgotten? There is one more point we would allude to in the "Life;" the author is very solicitous to deny the charge against Rossetti that he "worked the oracle," as the saying is, in regard to getting friendly reviews of his books. This complaint was made at the time the poems were published, by one of his own friends, who spoke strongly about it from personal knowledge; and it has been generally believed that on too many occasions the most favorable reviews of the poems which appeared were written by members of the poet's own special circle of friends. As a painter, we think that Rossetti has been overrated, except in the matter of color; as a colorist he was splendid, one may say inspired. It does not appear that he ever would put himself into the training necessary to master the drawing of the figure. His mind rushed to the general impression he desired to produce, and overleaped the drudgery involved in the careful study of drawing and composition. His biographer, who is quite frank on this point, implies, however, that this indifference to scientific accuracy of execution was the result of a principle in his mind rather than of carelessness or indifference. Speaking of the painter's early pictures, he says: Regarding execution, it may be said in general terms that Rossetti continued to progress, both in force and in facility, but did not evince any great disposition for attaining strenuous mastery in draughts manship, or resource in the management of perspective, or of architectural or landscape accessory. As to draughtsmanship of human and animal form, he of course recognized the high importance of this, whether he fully achieved it or not; but for the other matters he retained to the last a large measure of personal indifference, though necessarily conscious-none more so that these also are required in order to make a picture conformable to the modern standard. The fact is that he preferred the tone of mind which governed the treatment of such elements of the subject in olden art. That they should convey their message in a suggestive way he thought fully requisite; that they should be rigorously realized by scientific rule or naturalistic presentment he did not care; and if under a system of that sort they usurped the place of the main idea, or of human emotion or expressional force, he wished them well away. I do not aver that he was right in this view-the reader may judge for himself-but only that his view it assuredly was. This is ingeniously put; but, after all, does it not amount pretty much to a confession that Rossetti wanted to be a great painter without encountering fairly the chief technical difficulties of painting? It is very well to give a philosophical reason for it; it is quite true that a painting which is scientifi cally correct, but fails in its impression, is of little worth; but why neglect the effort to combine both qualities? Rossetti did neglect it, and we have always suspected that his refusal to publicly exhibit his paintings arose really from the same sensitiveness about criticism which induced him to manœuvre for favorable reviews of his poems; he was aware that they were defective in drawing, and was afraid of having it publicly pointed out. In the early unfinished picture entitled, "Found," the face of the lost girl, as if locking up her lips from the kiss of her old lover, is one of the most terribly pathetic things in modern art; but the figure of the man is not properly set on its legs, it is an awkward failure in the attempt to portray action, and thereby the work is spoiled. It may be noticed that Rossetti seldom attempts to represent action or movement of the figure in painting, and nearly always fails when he does. A notable example is the awkward figure of Dante in the large picture belonging to the Liverpool Corporation. He preferred to paint halflengths of ideal women in quiescent attitudes, thus escaping the difficulty of the lower limbs and the balance of the figure. The wealth of color in some of these works is extraordinary, but the faces are, almost without exception, sensual, almost animal in expression; women with great red lips and abnormally long necks, unlike anything in nature. The first time we ever saw (in a private collection) several of his larger works together, they produced on us an impression of astonishment at their power of color and their extraordinary novelty of style; but our experi ence was that the oftener they were seen the less was their effect, and we are inclined to think that this will be, if it is not already, the general feeling in regard to them. They are the productions of a man who might have been a really great painter if he would have fully faced the technical difficulties of the art, and if he had aimed at a more intellectual quality of expression and sentiment. Some of his smaller studies exhibit a remarkable intensity of endeavor to grasp the heart of the subject, in illustrating an incident or a legend; but these were never carried out on a larger scale, and it is possible that they would have been failures if they had been. In the beautifully illustrated volume containing the record of Ford Madox Brown's life, we find an unpretending narrative of the main facts of the artist's career and the subjects and composition of his principal pictures. We gather from it that Madox Brown was a very unpopular man except among a few intimate friends; for no worse reason, however, than a certain hard and uncompromising character which is precisely illustrated also in his paintings. He was independent enough to refuse to become formally a member of the P.R.B., though sympathizing with their general aims and being the personal friend of, we believe, all of them. We do not learn much as to his artistic training and studies; the best insight into his views on art is afforded by the note in the appendix in regard to his method of teaching at the Working Men's College, where he succeeded Rossetti in the capacity of teacher, and the differences between his method and that of Rossetti; the latter being in fact apparently characterized by no method at all. Rossetti objected to a firm outline; "he wished their work to be free; Brown, on the other hand, insisted on a firm outline "always know exactly what you mean by every line you draw on the paper; have a thorough idea as to which form of the model you intend to represent by the line you are draw ing." He also made the students apply the plumb-line to see where different parts of the model fell below each other; all which practices, it is significant to learn, had been unknown under Rossetti's rule. Madox Brown was a painter about whose works, and his position in the art, it is not very easy to form a decisive opinion at present. He was a thoroughly high-minded, hard-working, conscientious artist, who never took up a subject for painting without the desire to go thoroughly into the true expression of it, and to work out completely every portion of the picture. One characteristic maxim with him was that a painting should at all stages be kept up to such a generally equable condition of finish that an intelligent spectator could understand the meaning and the subject. That is to say, it was to be carried forward in each portion to the same stage before a new stage was commenced, so that the progress of the work was always kept before the eye as a whole. This would seem an admirable rule towards ensuring unity of design and quality in a picture. And yet, oddly enough, many of his own largest works have a most notable want of unity of design and consentaneous quality. Take "Work" for instance-a painting of the most remarkable ability and showing evidence everywhere of the most conscientious care and labor, and yet as a whole it is one of the ugliest and most undecorative pictures ever painted, and many of the figures in it seem each to belong to a different picture and to have got there together accidentally, like a crowd in the street. The same with some of his larger historical or narrative pictures-"Chaucer," "Cordelia's Portion," and others; they seem made up rather than inspired; every figure and all the accessories are carefully studied, but there is a sense left on the mind of their being all posed artificially. Look at the "Expulsion of the Danes from Manchester;" how like a stage scene it is, with the artificial and unreal action of the man shaking his sword at the townsfolk as he runs out; a figure which always gives us a sensation of the ludicrous, which certainly was not the painter's intention. We should say that Madox Brown was a very studious, earnest, well-instructed painter of very ambitious aims, but without genius, and with a very crude taste in color. On two or three occasions he seems to have got carried away by a subject so as to have fairly let himself go-notably SO in his "Romeo and Juliet," which is, to our thinking, his finest work, and is an expression of amorous passion such as has rarely been so powerfully realized in painting; it certainly throws every other Romeo and Juliet picture into the shade. The "Last Sight of England" is another work of real pathos, though we do not know that it is not injured rather than strengthened in effect by the mosaic of curiously assorted figures crowded into the background. "Juan and Haidee" is another work which impresses one as a complete and spontaneously conceived whole. "Cromwell at his Farm" is undoubtedly a powerfully conceived work, as far as the principal figure is concerned, but here again there is the kind of mechanical arrangement of incidents which we find in other works; the horse cropping the hedge, the pig about to run between his legs, the servant calling her master to dinner, all put together in a kind of puzzle-map manner to show how long Cromwell has sat there in thought; as if the artist said, "You see how completely I tell the story." Of late years Madox Brown was occupied in the congenial task of painting frescoes in the Manchester Town Hall-honor to the Manchester folk for carrying out this scheme and entrusting it to an artist of serious aims; and this work led him almost necessarily to study a more decorative method in composition. But in the main he is, in comparison with his effort, a disappointing painter, the majority of whose pictures command our respect without awaking our sympathy or appealing to our feelings. To read the life of Jean François Millet is almost like reading the Bible. Here, at least, there is nothing for question or doubt. It is the record of one of the purest and noblest lives ever lived, and the account of Millet's early days and of the character of his parents, and of the associations and influences under which he grew up, forms the exact reflex and explanation of the character of his artistic work after it took the form under which it finally became famous. In a literary point of view, too, this is by far the best written of the biographies before us. Millet's peasant father and mother seem like characters from the Old Testamentsimple people with grand souls. His father, Jean Louis Millet, was a man not without accomplishments. He loved music, "and taught the village choir so well that people came from all parts of the country-side to hear the singing of the Gréville choir." He made a collection of chants for their use, and he modelled in clay, and carved flowers and animals in wood; so that there was not wanting in his son the hereditary disposition towards art. But it is the pure love of nature in father and child that stands out as their most striking characteristic. One day, as little François stood at his father's side watching the setting sun sink into the waves, the glory of the scene stirred him to enthusiastic admiration, and he poured out his heart in an ecstasy of childish rapture. Jean Louis took off his cap reverently and said, "My son, it is God." The boy never forgot that word. His mother, simple, yet full of good sense and of interest in her son's artistic future, is as interesting a figure. Young Millet loved the wind and the sea and the trees. The verses of the Bible seemed to him in those days "like gigantic monuments;" an expression which reminds one strongly of Blake. For the account of the gradual dawning of his artistic genius, and the grave affectionate deliberation of his father on the subject, his first studies under a country teacher, his yearning towards Paris as the place which seemed to him the centre at which he could fulfil all his aims, and his bitter disappointment on his first acquaintance with the city, we must refer the reader to the biography. In his critical remarks on the |