guide, who nestles against her in the April weather. But around her is the loveliness of an English village landscape after rain. The warmth of the bursting sun consoles her as she turns her face to its light; the rainbow which she cannot see gives radiance to the humble cottages; the wet grass is cool to her hand, and the peace of resignation seems to fill her maimed and darkened life. But the contrast of her sorrow with nature’s joy is very real, though for the moment she forgets it in the little comfort that may yet be hers. The same resignation in the face of the unanswered problem transfigures the mourners in “The Vale of Rest,”— the two calm, almost stoical nuns in a convent garden at sunset time. The younger woman is digging a grave; the elder, who sits on a recumbent tombstone hard by, is gazing at the burning gold and crimson of the west, and sees in the midst of its splendour the darkness of the coffin- shaped cloud which, by a widespread superstition, was long deemed the omen of approaching death. The superb “Autumn Leaves,” which Mr. Ruskin pronounces “among the world’s masterpieces,” may perhaps be added to this great group of romantic landscapes, inasmuch as the pathos of its poetry is no less deep, though more subtle, than that of “Ophelia,” “The Woodman’s Daughter,” “The Blind Girl,” and “The Vale of Rest.” A group of children are burning dead leaves in the twilight of a mellow autumn day. Oblivious of the changing seasons, realizing nothing of the solemnity of autumn, or the sad significance of the waning year, they revel merely in the bonfire they have made, and are troubled by no fear for the winter, or for the chance of spring.