higher power than his own, and a benediction wrested for him, by the very humility and devoutness of his passion, from the glorified spirit beyond the grave. The dominant note of the design is one of resignation and hope; the passionate, strenuous, mystical resignation which Platonism brought into Christianity at the dawn of the Renaissance, and hope, born of the quickened fervour and resolution of romantic love. In two notable subjects Rossetti deals with incidents recorded by Dante of himself after the death of Beatrice. In a early water-colour of singular dignity and elevation of feeling, he celebrates “The Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice.” “On that day,” says Dante in the “Vita Nuova,” “which completed the year since my lady had been made of the citizens of eternal life, I was sitting in a place apart, where, remembering me of her, I was drawing an angel upon certain tablets; and as I drew, I turned my eyes, and saw beside me persons to whom it was fitting to do honour, and who were looking at what I did: and according as it was told me afterwards, they had been there awhile before I perceived them. Then I arose for salutation and said, ‘Another was present with me.’” The poet, kneeling at a window overlooking the Arno, absorbed in his memorial task, has suddenly become conscious of his visitors, and is overwhelmed with delicate pride and shame. “OUR LADY OF PITY.” From an unfinished study. _By permission of the Corporation of Birmingham._ [Illustration] Again, among the latest of Rossetti’s unfinished works, we have the illustration of another passage in the “Vita Nuova,” telling of Dante’s mourning for his lady’s death. “La Donna della Finestra” (“The Lady of the Window”), better known as “Our Lady of Pity,” represents the beautiful woman who looked down on Dante from a window when, as he passed weeping through the streets, and fearing lest the passers-by should mock him, he glanced up, craving for some sign of sympathy, and was consoled by her calm and pitying gaze. Sketches for this design were made in several media, but the head in the unfinished painting at Birmingham is the most perfect of the series, and in fact ranks among the finest of the female heads in all Rossetti’s single-figure pictures. The artist has caught with rare felicity the expression so acutely described by the poet: “Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh, Her eyes directed towards me with that look A mother casts on a delirious child.”