the finer effort.  This picture shows us what, in the artist’s view, man in this mortal life desires, pursues, and mostly loses.  Fortune has a lock of hair on her forehead by which alone she may be captured, and as she glides mockingly along, she leads her pursuers across rock, stream, dale, desert, and meadow typical of life.  The pursuit of the elusive is a favourite theme with Watts, and is set forth by the picture “Mischief.”  Here a fine young man is battling for his liberty against an airy spirit representing Folly or Mischief.  Humanity bends his neck beneath the enchanter’s yoke—­a wreath of flowers thrown round his neck—­and is led an unwilling captive; as he follows the roses turn to briars about his muscular limbs, and at every step the tangle becomes denser, while one by one the arrows drop from his hand.  The thought of “Life’s Illusions” and “Fata Morgana” is again set forth in “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi,” where we see the body of a king whose crown, and all that represents to him the glory of the world, is left at death.  It is not, however, in Watts’ conception essential glory that passes away, but the Glory of the World.  Upon the dark curtain that hangs behind the shrouded figure are words that represent his final wisdom, “What I spent, I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have.”

[Illustration:  PLATE VII.—­THE GOOD SAMARITAN

(At the Manchester Art Gallery)

     This is an early picture, painted in the year 1852 and
     presented to the city of Manchester by the artist in honour of
     the prison philanthropist, a native of that city.]

These I call “Pessimistic paintings,” because they represent the true discovery ever waiting to be made by man, that the sum total of all that can be gained in man’s external life—­wealth, fame, strength, and power—­that these inevitably pass from him.  To know this, to see it clearly, to accept it, is the happiness of the pessimist, who thenceforward fixes his hope and bends his energies to the realisation of other and higher goods.  In this he becomes an optimist, for this is the pursuit, as Watts never ceases to teach, in which man can and does attain his goal.  Thus our prophet-painter, having seen and known and felt all this, having tested it in the personal and intimate life, brings to a triumphant close his great series, where positive rather than negative teaching is given.

The Great Realities.—­We have seen in “Chaos” primordial matter; we have now from Watts’ brush the origin of things on the metaphysical side.  In “The All-pervading,” there sits the Spirit of the Universe, holding in her lap the globe of the systems, the representation of the last conclusions of philosophy.  This mysterious picture is very low in tone, conforming to Watts’ rule to make the colouring suit the subject.  Here there is nothing hard or defined; the spirit of the universe is merely suggested or hinted at, his great wings enclose all.  The elliptical form