this I saw and knew: this, if any180 thing of mine, is worth your memory.' That is his 'writing;' it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a 'Book.' 185 Perhaps you think no books were ever so written?

But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, or at all in kindness, or do you think there is 190 never any honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently 195 done, that bit is his book or his piece of art. It is mixed always with evil fragments - ill-done, redundant, affected work. But if you read rightly, you will easily discover the 200 true bits, and those are the book.

Now books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men: by great readers, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are 205 all at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before; yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that 210 you cannot read that that what you lose to-day you cannot gain tomorrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stableboy, when you may talk with queens 216 and kings; or flatter yourself that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect, that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for entrée here, and 220 audience there, when all the while

this eternal court is open to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time? 225 Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from

that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of com- 230 panionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the 235 truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the Dead.

"The place you desire,' and the place you fit yourself for, I must 240 also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this: it is open to labour and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name 245 overawe, overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portières of that silent Faubourg 250 St. Germain, there is but brief question: 'Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you 255 long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms? - no. If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord 260 may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you with considerate pain; but here we neither feign nor interpret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if 265 you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if you would recognise our presence.'

This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it is much. 270 You must, in a word, love these people, if you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. You must love them, and show your love in these 276 two following ways.

(1) First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, ob280 serve; not to find your own expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in many respects. 285 (2) Very ready we are to say of a book, 'How good this is - that's exactly what I think!' But the right feeling is, 'How strange that is! I never thought of that before, and 290 yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, some day.' But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not 295 to find yours. Judge it afterwards if you think yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first. And be sure, also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at 300 his meaning all at once;

nay,

that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong words too; 305 but he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of 310 this, nor analyse that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They do not give it you by way of help, but of reward; and 815 will make themselves sure that you deserve it before they allow you to reach it. But it is the same with

DAN

the physical type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no reason why the electric forces of the 820 earth should not carry whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings and people might know that all the gold they could get was there; and with- 325 out any trouble of digging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it so. She puts it in little fissures 330 in the earth, nobody knows where: you may dig long and find none; you must dig painfully to find any.

And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. When you come to a 335 good book, you must ask yourself, ‘Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim myself, my sleeves well 340 up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper?' And, keeping the figure a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you 345 are in search of being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, 350 wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any good author's meaning without those tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, 355 finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal.

at London, where he became professor of Italian in King's College. His son early showed literary inclinations, but, on leaving King's College School, decided to become an artist. He entered the Royal

Academy of Painting, and there made the acquaintance of two other art students, Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, with whom he founded (1848) the 'PreRaphaelite Brotherhood', which, in reaction to the current conventional style of academic art, was to revert to the elaborate and mystical method of the early Italian painters. To defend their new artistic principles they started a short-lived journal, The Germ (1850), to which Rossetti contributed some of his finest poems; but they had to struggle hard against virulent criticism, till Ruskin took up their defence. In 1860, after a long engagement, Rossetti was able to marry Elizabeth Siddal, a milliner's assistant, who had sat to him for many of his pictures and become his pupil in water-colour painting. The sudden death of his wife (1862), only two years after their marriage, affected him so much, that he had the manuscript of his unpublished poems buried in her coffin; but, in 1869, when the state of his eyes forced him temporarily to abandon painting, he consented to their disinterment. During the latter years of his life he suffered much from insomnia, and unfortunately resorted for a relief to chloral, which eventually shattered his nervous system. He died at the small wateringplace of Birchington, near Margate, in Kent.

By profession a painter, Rossetti was no less famous as a poet. Both for his verse and his painting he drew his inspiration from an ardent love for mediævalism and a mystical passion for beauty

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in human form. His poetry, the publication of which was delayed till the Poems of 1870 and the Ballads and Sonnets of 1881, is remarkable for a mystical supernaturalism, probably imbibed from Dante, for a strong pictorial element and elaborateness of detail, and for a magical beauty of expression and an exquisite charm of verbal music. His admiration for the old border ballads induced him to try a revival of their form in such narrative poems as the magnificent supernatural ballads of Sister Helen (1853) and Rose Mary (1871), the romantic tale of The Staff and Scrip (1852), and the historical ballads of The White Ship (1881) and The King's Tragedy (1881). His highest efforts in lyrical poetry are the beautiful dreamlike picture of The Blessed Damozel (1849), written when he was only eighteen, and the great sonnetsequence of The House of Life (1870) with its impassioned comment on life, love, and death. In Dante and his Circle (1861) he gave us very effective translations from the early Italian poets.

As a painter, though not quite perfect in technique, he was a master of colour, and possessed a marvellous power for expressing the mysticism of beauty and passion. The subjects of his pictures are mainly taken from sacred history (Ecce Ancilla Domini 1850) and the poetry of Dante (Beata Beatrix 1863, Dante's Dream 1870). His symbolical female portraits (Bocca Baciata, Proserpine, Lilith, Astarte Syriaca) created a new type of female beauty, which unfortunately soon degenerated into mannerism.

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It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on;

By God built over the sheer depth
The which is Space begun;
So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in Heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.
Beneath, the tides of day and night

With flame and darkness ridge. The void, as low as where this earth

Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met

'Mid deathless love's acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves

Their heart-remember'd names; And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bow'd herself and stoop'd

Out of the circling charm; Until her bosom must have made The bar she lean'd on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm.

From the fix'd place of Heaven she saw

Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze Her gaze still strove

Within the gulf to pierce Its path; and now she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres.

'I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come,' she said.
'Have I not pray'd in Heaven?
on earth,

Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd? Are not two prayers a perfect strength? And shall I feel afraid?

'When round his head the aureole clings,

And he is cloth'd in white,
I'll take his hand and go with him
To the deep wells of light;
As unto a stream we will step down,
And bathe there in God's sight.

'We two will stand beside that shrine,
Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirr'd continually
With prayer sent up to God;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt
Each like a little cloud.

'We two will lie i' the shadow of

That living mystic tree

Within whose secret growth the Dove
Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that His plumes touch
Saith His Name audibly.

'And I myself will teach to him,

I myself, lying so,

The songs I sing here; which his voice
Shall pause in, hush'd and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,
Or some new thing to know.'

(Alas! we two, we two, thou say'st!
Yea, one wast thou with me
That once of old. But shall God lift
To endless unity

The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee?)

'We two,' she said, 'will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is, With her five handmaidens, whose,

names

Are five sweet symphonies, Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys.

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Sister Helen,

Little brother.'