twice her age. In the words of Sir Charles's Memoir: 'She widened her
conception of art by the teaching of the philosopher and by the study of
the literatures to which the schooling of Mark Pattison admitted her.
She saw, too, men and things, travelled largely with him, became
mistress of many tongues, and gained above all a breadth of desire for
human knowledge, destined only to grow with the advance of years.'
[Footnote: _The Book of the Spiritual Life_, by the late Lady Dilke,
with a Memoir of the Author by Sir Charles W. Dilke, p. 18.]

At twenty-five years of age she was contributing philosophical articles
to the _Westminster Review_, and for years she wrote the review of
foreign politics for the _Annual Register_. Later she furnished art
criticisms to the _Portfolio_, the _Saturday Review_, and the _Academy_,
of which last she was art editor. It was as an art critic that she had
come to be known, and to this work she brought a remarkable equipment;
for to her technical knowledge and artist's training was added a deep
study of the tendencies of history and of human thought. _Art in the
Modern State_, in which she wrote of the art of the 'Grand Siecle' in
its bearing on modern political and social organizations, has been
quoted as the book most characteristic of the philosophical tendency of
her writing, but this did not appear till 1888. The _Renaissance of Art
in France_, which had been published in 1879, was illustrated by
drawings from her own pencil, and in 1884 had appeared _Claude Lorrain_,
written by herself in the pure and graceful French of which she was
mistress.

She had been a pupil of Mulready, whose portrait still decorates the
mantelpiece of her Pyrford home, and in the early South Kensington days
had come much under the influence of Watts and Ruskin. There were
numbered among her friends many who had achieved distinction in the art,