affability. Mr Waterhouse has a study of a subject from a poem
that Mr. Pendennis, the novelist (whom I knew well), was very fond
of when he first came on the town: "The Lady of Shalott." It
represents a very delicate invalid, in a boat, under a counterpane.
I remember the poem ran (it was by young Mr. Tennyson):-


They crossed themselves, their stars they blest,
Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.
There lay a parchment on her breast
That puzzled more than all the rest
The well-fed wits of Camelot:
"The web was woven curiously,
The charm is broken utterly;
Draw near and fear not, this is I
The Lady of Shalott."


I admit that the wonder and dismay of the "well-fed wits," if the
Lady was like Mr. Waterhouse's picture of her, do not surprise me.
But I confess I do not understand modern poetry, nor, perhaps,
modern painting. Where is historical Art? Where is Alfred and the
Cake--a subject which, as is well known, I discovered in my
researches in history. Where is "Udolpho in the Tower"? or the
"Duke of Rothsay the Fourth Day after He was Deprived of his
Victuals"? or "King John Signing Magna Charta"? They are gone
with the red curtain, the brown tree, the storm in the background.
Art is revolutionary, like everything else in these times, when
Treason itself, in the form of a hoary apostate and reviewer of
contemporary fiction, glares from the walls, and is painted by