DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI,

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was as strong as mine, I assure you, was with him from the very first. Indeed I never met a man whom I could call my friend in so full a sense on no longer personal knowledge. But indeed I, as well as others who met him afterwards through me, had already felt that he was a man to seek out and know, from the time when we read his Life of Etty.' Thus, if such facts could be furnished by yourself, as you would wish to be included in a memoir of him, I think I might rely on my own knowledge of and sympathy with, his views and powers, to convey a true idea of these.

"Whenever you are ready to claim such assistance as my brother and I are not only ready but most anxious to render in bringing out the book, [Blake] conjointly with yourself, you may rely on our not delaying the publication by any neglect on our part. I have not a perfect idea in what state the MS. remains, but I know enough of his plans to be able perhaps to recognize where anything remains to be done. From what he last told me, however, I trust his work on it was almost complete if not quite so.

"I hope you will let me know therefore as soon as you are quite ready to enter on this task, and shall hope also, either now or when I see you, to receive the daguerreotype.

"With warmest wishes and remembrances, I remain, dear Mrs. Gilchrist, ever yours sincerely,

D. G R."

The following letter was the last that Anne Gilchrist received from Dante Gabriel Rossetti before her departure from Chelsea :

I

"14 Chatham Place, 31 January, 1862.

MY DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: I am convinced you are quite right in purposing to return to the country for the present. Indeed I am sure all your friends would feel the greatest increase of anxiety on your account were you to remain at Chelsea. The associations there must indeed be quite overwhelming, when even to his friends elsewhere the reality of such a loss still seems bewildering.

"Mr. Ireland spent an evening with me and kindly brought the photograph, which is indeed as you say a record of him ten years ago, but not as I knew him— his face having gained latterly no less in power, I should think, than in what are commonly called good looks. . . .

"I was very glad to hear from Mr. Ireland of the continued improvement in your little invalid [Herbert Harlakenden], and trust that recovery is now quite

ensured."

Jane Carlyle endeavoured to persuade her neighbour to continue to live at number six; even suggesting that Anne Gilchrist and Geraldine Jewsbury should unite forces and live together. After a good deal of anxious consideration, Anne Gilchrist commenced house hunting in the country, and unassisted, one pouring wet night, lighted upon dear little Brookbank,' Shottermill : a wiser choice was hardly possible, as will be seen.

When the time drew near for leaving Chelsea, Jane Carlyle wrote: " Feb. 1862. . . . Since you are to go, I wish to Heaven you were out of all this! I know how dreadful these details must be! how little chance of calm

A NEW SCENE.

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there is for you, till you have gathered yourself together

in a new scene.

"Don't write, but tell Maria how the little girl is ? and how your own head is?"

The day of departure soon came. "I remember," says Isabella Ireland, "watching from the windows (Mrs. Carlyle's drawing-room) the loading of the vans. When the third waggon, heavily laden with pretty old carved furniture, started for Haslemere, Mrs. Carlyle shrugged her shoulders and avouched a belief that Mrs. Gilchrist would 'skin, and bury herself alive for the benefit of her children.'"