Once again did Rossetti attempt the subject of “The Annunciation,” but only in a water-colour sketch, which found a place, however, in the small but choice collection in the Burlington Club. Here also the lily affords the symbolic keynote of the design,—the Virgin is seen bathing among the water-lilies in a stream; but the singularly fine conception of the angel’s salutation gives a special value and interest to the work. The figure that appears before her on the bank assumes for the moment the aspect of a cross; being so enfolded with his golden wings that the Virgin sees not only the glory of her visitant but the dire portent of the message which he brings. “The Annunciation” of Mr. Arthur Hughes is more conventional in spirit, with its veiled Virgin and its stiffly self-conscious Gabriel, and lacks the note of prescience which gives solemnity to Rossetti’s designs. Mr. Burne-Jones, on the other hand, gives us a more mature and stately maid. His Mary, nobly simple though she is, seems better prepared for the sacred honour of her destiny, and does not touch us so deeply as the shrinking girl in “Ecce Ancilla Domini,” or even as the poor beggar-maiden (for so she appears) in Mr. Hughes’s “Nativity,” bending timid and reverent on her knees in the straw before the Holy Child. But the note of prescience, as we have seen,—the prophetic symbolism which brings to mind in every incident of the Saviour’s life the whole scheme of sacrifice and redemption, dominates all the greatest Pre- Raphaelite work. The suggestions of the inevitable Cross recur in Rossetti’s early picture, “The Passover in the Holy Family,” in Millais’s “Christ in the House of His Parents,” and in Holman Hunt’s “Shadow of Death,” with a force and urgency that points at once to the universal significance of the history. “The Passover in the Holy Family” shows us the boy Christ carrying a bowl filled with the blood of the newly-slain Paschal lamb, and gazing at it with a mysterious foreboding in his eyes. In the dim background St. Joseph and St. Anna (or, according to Mr. William Rossetti, and as seems more probable, St. Elizabeth), are seen kindling a fire for the ritual. Mary is gathering bitter herbs, and Zacharias is sprinkling the door-posts and lintel with the lamb’s blood. The youthful John Baptist is kneeling at the feet of Christ, binding His shoe.