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drawings and engravings graced the walls. She says: "We have old prints for our dumb companions-charming children of Sir Joshua's, and large hatted ladies of his and Romney's."

The author of "The History of Philosophy " writes a concluding letter in which he says:-" Mrs. Lewes joins with me in the expression of a hope that we may one day make your personal acquaintance. We receive friends every Sunday afternoon, and any Sunday that you may be in the neighbourhood of the Priory it will give us pleasure to see you."

George Eliot, too, sends a farewell note from Cherrimans, the neighbouring house in Shottermill:August 2, 1871.

"Dear Mrs. Gilchrist: We parted from Brookbank yesterday. . . . After Mr. Lewes had written to you, I was made aware a small dessert or bread and butter dish had been broken. That arch-sinner, the cat, was credited with the guilt.

"This note of course needs no answer, and is intended to make me a clear breast about the crockery. Hoping some day to shake you by the hand in our own home, I remain, yours always sincerely,

M. E. LEWES."

It is to be regretted that the trio never met: to visit a crowded reception was regarded as formidable as many as sixty people would congregate at the Priory on Sunday afternoon. "Friendly intercourse, in my own home," was the mode of society congenial to Anne Gilchrist.

This was still a time of convalescence with Anne

Gilchrist in a letter to her son, at Felstead Grammar School, she says:-"How I do enjoy this delicious spring weather and the singing of the birds; I loiter about for hours in the beautiful [Colne] avenue or some favourite field; and have such happy thoughts about my dear children, and our future together, now God is making me strong and well again; and about Walt Whitman and his divine poems. Still, I am feeling rather anxious to be in London again.

"The Tennysons having heard of my illness, wrote a kind letter and sent me a beautifully bound copy of the Idylls of The King and The Holy Grail."

And from Colne, March 1871, she says:-" Still such delicious weather, is it not? I have been twice into Chalkney wood, into the cleared part where it is dry and sunny, with plenty of felled trees to sit on, and have enjoyed it most thoroughly. It is really beautiful just there, with the Colne winding along through green meadows below you, and the ground rising towards White and Wakes Colne, and the little spires of the two churches, the cottages dotted about and the vivid green of the young corn on the slopes, also the Chappel Viaduct spanning a valley, shows through the trees.”

We are quite determined that the garden of Essex shall not be a mere name to the reader; to William M. Rossetti, writing July 18, 1871, she describes the place more minutely :-" Colne is always a green place, being a damp valley; but this year, owing to the heavy rainfalls, it is so vividly and deliciously green, that one's eyes have a delightful consciousness of it all day long. My mother's garden too, though not

A WILDERNESS OF ROSES.

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much of a garden, has two pleasant features-the flower borders are a wilderness of roses and pretty Betsey' and tall white July lilies, instead of those eternal rows of calceolaria and scarlet geranium and blue lobelia which are considered the proper thing now in a well-kept garden and at the end is a green mound thickly shaded by an old yew, whence one looks up a ten-acre green field bordered with an avenue of the stateliest old elms I ever beheld, leading up to a grey church tower, with staircase turret that is as perfect in its kind of beauty as the elms in theirs.

.

. I am looking forward to the autumn months at dear little Brookbank--then to finding in London something more of a home than I have had for the last three

When settled in London (Jan. 31, 1872), she mentions in a letter to W. M. Rossetti, having "read somewhere a few extracts from the Nursery Rhymes, which were as sweet and spontaneous as a robin's song and made me rejoice: melody of the right kind indeed for the little ones; who want it as much as they want air and sunshine, or laughter and kisses. [Rhymes, i.e. Sing Song, by Christina Rossetti.] I have read, too, your brother's grand poem Cloud Confines;' and though I always inwardly rebel against doubt and fear, and respond with joy and eagerness only to an indomitable faith and hope, I know for truth's sake, that mood needs expression too, and has here found one, of the sombre beauty that befits it."

And from Earl's Colne, August 28, 1873, Anne Gilchrist writes congratulations to her friend upon

his approaching marriage with Miss Lucy Madox Brown.

"My dear Mr. Rossetti: The announcement at the end of your letter rejoices me heartily-earnest believer that I am in the enlarged, deepened, completed life only to be attained through a happy marriage.

"Little as I have seen of Lucy (if I may call her by that pretty name) she is one who draws you to her by a sweetness and charm of look and manner that you feel instinctively to be no acquired graces, but the growth and flower of an inward beauty of heart and soul. I know too that she shares your intellectual tastes and so can give you the close companionship and friendship that yield such a satisfying range and enduring freshness to domestic life. When the happy day for its beginning comes no one will sympathize and rejoice with you both more warmly than I, dear Friend..

And in the autumn of 1874 she thanks the same friend" cordially for the copy of your memoir and edition of Blake's Poems, the former of which I have read with admiration and sympathy. . . Nothing, it seems to me, can be more penetrating and judicious, yet warmed by enthusiasm, than your presentment of Blake's genius. Please tell your dear Wife how I sympathize with her pride in the dedication, which seems to invest the book with subtle fragrance like a flower shut between the leaves."

"... My dear mother breathed her last very gently and almost without suffering on August 15 [1875]. She had entered her ninetieth year the previous June She realized in her beautiful old age and painless death

A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE.

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something of the ideal the Poet we love so much has drawn.

In the spring of 1876 The Daily News reviewed the Centennial Edition of Leaves of Grass; the review was immediately followed by an eloquent letter from Robert Buchanan about Walt Whitman. In the preceding autumn, William Michael Rossetti and Anne Gilchrist started the project of buying up a portion of the Centennial Edition of Leaves of Grass.

I, Torriano Avenue; October 10, 1875. "My dear Mr. Rossetti: I have been pondering your letter this day or two. It had occurred to me that perhaps your excellent scheme might be in part frustrated by some, perhaps a good many, of the Public Libraries declining the proffered gift. How would it be to invest the money on an edition of Mr. Whitman's forthcoming book The Two Rivulets?

"I know you will say what a pity not to give his very finest poems! those which may be said to constitute his great message to Humanity, which he himself speaks of having written under the influence of an imperious conviction of the commands of his nature as total and irresistible as those which make the sea flow and the globe revolve.'

"But the Two Rivulets' will contain some of these very finest things, as, for instance, the poem Mr. Swinburne singles out for mention 'Out of the Cradle endlessly rocking,' President Lincoln's burial Hymn O Captain,' 'To think of Time,' Poems of Joy, The Whispers of Heavenly Death;' and in general all contained in the Passage to India,' besides the noble prose