From this initial belief in the potency of the unseen there comes the apprehension of the mystery of fate, of the burden of impenetrable destiny, of the evil powers that assail mankind from within. Something even of the ancient fear of the jealousy of the gods against men’s happiness returns in the mediæval awe of human joys or triumphs, and its ascetic suspicion of prosperity, more especially in the field of romantic love. A profound insight of the dualism of nature keeps the romantic spirit in remembrance of the cost of all earthly pleasure, and of the price set by the laws of being upon all aspiration and desire. This it is that gives its subtlest charm to the “Romeo and Juliet” of Madox Brown, with its embracing lovers on the balcony at break of day, full of the passionate poetry of protest against the pitiless caprice, as it seems, of the fate that tears them asunder; and to the “Ophelia” of Rossetti,—now sitting troubled and half-frightened before Hamlet’s earnest gaze, now offering him the treasured letters from the casket at her side, now led away in her “first madness,” by the hand of Horatio, from the presence of the king and queen; or of Hughes,—singing dreamily to herself as she sits by the waterside on a fallen tree; or of Watts,— gazing down with yearning eyes into the pool beneath the willow; or—best of all—of Millais, floating downstream to her death, with her slackening hands full of flowers, the very embodiment of the pathetic helplessness of weak and isolated womanhood against the tide of the world’s strife,— weak, indeed, through the isolation of ages, having never known, in life or ancestry, the bracing discipline of a free and responsible existence. No one of the Pre-Raphaelites has equalled Millais at his best in the landscape setting of the struggle between the human soul and the circumstance that hems it in; and the scenery of “Ophelia” is among the most exquisite of his work. The beauty of the river and its richly wooded banks, its overhanging branches, and its current-driven weeds, gives the greater pathos to the dying girl’s face, on which the wraith only of its past and lost beauty lingers to mock the sadness of her end. “The Woodman’s Daughter” suggests even more finely the contrast of the unimpassioned glory of nature and the tragedy of romantic love; for here it is not death but life, the complexity of life and duty, that separates the lovers each from each. Between the rough and uncomely peasant girl and the shy young aristocrat who stands so awkwardly before her with his proffered gift of hothouse fruit, there is a gulf fixed which will take a higher civilization than ours to bridge over. And again, in treating of the broader and more common loves and joys of humanity, does Millais set before us the same contrast in “The Blind Girl” and “The Vale of Rest.” The Blind Girl is a poor and uncomely vagrant halting by the road-side, wrapping her shawl round her child-