One of my greatest friends was a son of Sir Andrew Hart, George Vaughan Hart. I painted his eldest daughter when she was a beautiful child, and it was my delight afterwards to paint her when she had grown a beautiful woman. She had a fascinating precipitation of thought and action that recalled her mother, together with the beauty derived from both father and mother. I've painted all sorts of people, but I think Ethel Hart was my most difficult subject. She herself was indulgent and easy to please, and her family did not much mind, but I could never please myself. I think that it was because she was an enigma to herself and to me that she tantalised me, being, as she was, just between girlhood and womanhood. I lived in that house many days, perpetually failing and perpetually hopeful. One day stands out very distinctly in my memory. George Hart was at home, working over law papers which he had brought into the drawing-room, and all the family were there, and by good luck there came that day, to enliven us and add its background to the happy scene, a tremendous thunder-storm. And by further good luck there was present Hart's maiden aunt who was very much afraid of thunder-storms. The house was on the top of Howth Hill, a wild peninsula of mountain and heather, jutting out into Dublin Bay. All around the house the lightening played incessantly, the flames seeming to lick the windows of the room, and the thunder was continuous, while the maiden aunt grew more and more alarmed. She was pious also, which I have always noticed makes people more afraid of thunder-storms. 'Dear, Dear,' Hart would say, after a particularly frightful crash shaking the whole house. 'Dear, Dear! I hope those lightening rods are well oiled.' And again after another crash 'Well, Well, I should not like a volcano on Ireland's Eye' which was a little rocky islet just outside the harbour. Knowing that Hart was a geologist, I foolishly asked if Ireland's Eye had ever been a volcano. 'Not in my time' came the answer in his deep voice. The storm lasted for a long time and through it all we talked and listened and were merry and afraid, except the maiden aunt who was only afraid, while I pursued steadily the painting of my beautiful model. I pity anyone who is not afraid of a thunder-storm. Terror is a delightful feeling if beauty be added to it. The Hebraic conception of Jehovah fascinates the imagination, because it combines terror with its beauty. If children are frightened by a thunder-storm, take them to a window and bid them watch the lightening play among the clouds, and their fears will change into a kind of exultation more delightful than listening to a fairy tale. Beauty cleanses feeling. What more distressing, what more profoundly disturbing than the ache inspired by sex passion; yet add romance and beauty, and while the feeling remains, the ache is gone. It has been cleansed. A tragedy acted on the stage inspires pity and terror, but if