beautiful boy with lithe brown limbs and rainbow-coloured wings, all
shrinking like a crumpled leaf, is trying, with vain hands, to bar the
entrance. A little dove, undisturbed by the agony of the terrible
conflict, waits patiently at the foot of the steps for her playmate; but
will wait in vain, for though the face of Death is hidden from us, yet we
can see from the terror in the boy's eyes and quivering lips, that,
Medusa-like, this grey phantom turns all it looks upon to stone; and the
wings of Love are rent and crushed. Except on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel in Rome, there are perhaps few paintings to compare with this in
intensity of strength and in marvel of conception. It is worthy to rank
with Michael Angelo's God Dividing the Light from the Darkness.

Next to it are hung five pictures by Millais. Three of them are
portraits of the three daughters of the Duke of Westminster, all in white
dresses, with white hats and feathers; the delicacy of the colour being
rather injured by the red damask background. These pictures do not
possess any particular merit beyond that of being extremely good
likenesses, especially the one of the Marchioness of Ormonde. Over them
is hung a picture of a seamstress, pale and vacant-looking, with eyes red
from tears and long watchings in the night, hemming a shirt. It is meant
to illustrate Hood's familiar poem. As we look on it, a terrible
contrast strikes us between this miserable pauper-seamstress and the
three beautiful daughters of the richest duke in the world, which breaks
through any artistic reveries by its awful vividness.

The fifth picture is a profile head of a young man with delicate aquiline
nose, thoughtful oval face, and artistic, abstracted air, which will be
easily recognised as a portrait of Lord Ronald Gower, who is himself
known as an artist and sculptor. But no one would discern in these five
pictures the genius that painted the Home at Bethlehem and the portrait