a little arbitrary in applying the principle; and Collinson seems to have regarded it as quite superfluous to look into a map, and see whether Nazareth was near the sea or not.  Or possibly he trusted to Dante Rossetti’s poem “Ave,” in which likewise Nazareth is a marine town.  My brother advisedly stuck to this in 1869, when I pointed out the error to him:  he replied, “I fear the sea must remain at Nazareth:  you know an old painter would have made no bones if he wanted it for his background.”  I cannot say whether Collinson, if put to it, would have pleaded the like arbitrary and almost burlesque excuse:  at any rate he made the blunder, and in a much more detailed shape than in Rossetti’s lyric.  “The Child Jesus” is, I think, the poem of any importance that he ever wrote.

By Christina Rossetti:  “A Pause of Thought.”  On the wrapper of “The Germ” the writer’s name is given as “Ellen Alleyn”:  this was my brother’s concoction, as Christina did not care to figure under her own name.  “A Pause of Thought” was written in February 1848, when she was but little turned of seventeen.  Taken as a personal utterance (which I presume it to be, though I never inquired as to that, and though it was at first named “Lines in Memory of Schiller’s Der Pilgrim"), it is remarkable; for it seems to show that, even at that early age, she aspired ardently after poetic fame, with a keen sense of “hope deferred.”

By F. G. Stephens (called “John Seward” on the wrapper):  “The Purpose and Tendency of Early Italian Art.”  This article speaks for itself as being a direct outcome of the Praeraphaelite movement:  its aim is to enforce personal independent endeavour, based upon close study of nature, and to illustrate the like qualities shown in the earlier school of art.  It is more hortatory than argumentative, and is in fact too short to develop its thesis—­it indicates some main points for reflection.

By W. Bell Scott:  “Morning Sleep.”  This poem delighted us extremely when Mr. Scott sent it in reply to a request for contributions.  I still think it a noticeably fine thing, and one of his most equable pieces of execution.  It was republished in his volume of “Poems,” 1875—­with some verbal changes, and shortened, I think damaged.

By Patmore:  “Stars and Moon.”

By Ford Madox Brown:  “On the Mechanism of a Historical Picture”:  Part 1, the Design.  It is by this time a well-recognized fact that Brown was one of the men in England, or indeed in Europe, most capable of painting a historical picture, and it is a matter of regret that “The Germ” came to an end before he had an opportunity of continuing and completing this serviceable compendium of precepts.  He had studied art in continental schools; but I do not think he imported into his article much of what he had been taught,—­rather what he had thought out for himself, and had begun putting into practice.