Rossetti's younger, but very little younger, sister, Christina Georgina, was born in 1830, sat to her brother early for the charming picture of "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and is said also to figure in his illustration of the weeping queens in Tennyson's _Morte D' Arthur_. But she lived an exceedingly quiet life, mainly occupied in attention to her mother and in devotion; for she had been brought up, and all her life remained, a member of the Church of England. Her religious feelings more and more coloured her poetical work, which was produced at intervals from 1861 till close upon her death in the winter of 1894-95. It was not hastily written, and latterly formed mainly the embellishment of certain prose books of religious reflection or excerpt. But it was always of an exquisite quality. Its first expression in book form was _Goblin Market, and other Poems_ (1861), which, as well as her next volume, _The Prince's Progress_ (1866), was illustrated by her brother's pencil. A rather considerable time then passed without anything of importance (a book called _Sing-Song_ excepted), till in 1881 _A Pageant, and other Poems_ was added. A collection of all these was issued nine years later, but with this the gleanings from the devotional works above mentioned (the chief of which were _Time Flies_ and _The Face of the Deep_) have still to be united. There are those who seriously maintain Miss Rossetti's claim to the highest rank among English poetesses, urging that she excels Mrs. Browning, her only possible competitor, in freedom from blemishes of form and from the liability to fall into silliness and maudlin gush, at least as much as she falls short of her in variety and in power of shaping a poem of considerable bulk. But without attempting a too rigid classification we may certainly say that Miss Rossetti has no superior among Englishwomen who have had the gift of poetry. In the title-piece of her first book the merely quaint side of Prae-Raphaelitism perhaps appears rather too strongly, though very agreeably to some. But "Dreamland," "Winter Rain," "An End," "Echo," the exquisite song for music "When I am dead, my dearest," and the wonderful devotional pieces called "The Three Enemies" and "Sleep at Sea," with many charming sonnets, adorned a volume which, on the whole, showed more of the tendencies of the school than any which had yet appeared. For it was less exclusively mediaeval than Mr. Morris' _Defence of Guinevere_, and very much more varied as well as more mature than Mr. Swinburne's _Queen Mother_ and _Rosamond_. _The Prince's Progress_ showed a great advance on _Goblin Market_ in dignity and freedom from mannerism, and the minor poems in general rivalled those in the earlier collection, though the poetess perhaps never quite equalled "Sleep at Sea." The contents of _A Pageant, and other Poems_ were at once more serious and lighter than those of the two former books (for Miss Rossetti, like her brother, had