galleries. The walls are hung with scarlet damask above a dado of dull
green and gold; there are luxurious velvet couches, beautiful flowers and
plants, tables of gilded and inlaid marbles, covered with Japanese china
and the latest 'Minton,' globes of 'rainbow glass' like large
soap-bubbles, and, in fine, everything in decoration that is lovely to
look on, and in harmony with the surrounding works of art.

Burne-Jones and Holman Hunt are probably the greatest masters of colour
that we have ever had in England, with the single exception of Turner,
but their styles differ widely. To draw a rough distinction, Holman Hunt
studies and reproduces the colours of natural objects, and deals with
historical subjects, or scenes of real life, mostly from the East,
touched occasionally with a certain fancifulness, as in the Shadow of the
Cross. Burne-Jones, on the contrary, is a dreamer in the land of
mythology, a seer of fairy visions, a symbolical painter. He is an
imaginative colourist too, knowing that all colour is no mere delightful
quality of natural things, but a 'spirit upon them by which they become
expressive to the spirit,' as Mr. Pater says. Watts's power, on the
other hand, lies in his great originative and imaginative genius, and he
reminds us of AEschylus or Michael Angelo in the startling vividness of
his conceptions. Although these three painters differ much in aim and in
result, they yet are one in their faith, and love, and reverence, the
three golden keys to the gate of the House Beautiful.

On entering the West Gallery the first picture that meets the eye is Mr.
Watts's Love and Death, a large painting, representing a marble doorway,
all overgrown with white-starred jasmine and sweet brier-rose. Death, a
giant form, veiled in grey draperies, is passing in with inevitable and
mysterious power, breaking through all the flowers. One foot is already
on the threshold, and one relentless hand is extended, while Love, a