"pitch" day after day, brings out with him a series of highly-coloured oil-pictures on cardboard; the public, however, have already discovered him to be a hollow fraud. There is also said to be in existence one young lady pavement artist, in sailor hat and neat get-up (though where her present "pitch" may be I know not), who labels herself proudly "the only one in England." That Londoners are great lovers of the picturesque may be seen from the admiring crowd that surround the pavement artist; they prefer Nature, however, brought "home" to them in crude and garish colours. Yet, as likely as not, when the shabby pastellist has put away chalks and duster for the day, and betaken himself to his nightly refuge in Soho or Hatton Garden, the sky behind him will robe itself in intense hues of orange, purple, and crimson that baffle imitation, and before which even pavement-art fades into insignificance. For the sunset-skies of London are a marvel. All through the varying year they are beautiful, but in September and October they are at their best. The sun either sinks, a bold red disc, behind the black houses and still blacker plane trees, or it clothes its retreat with bright purple and madder clouds, against which, with their golden background, the tree branches show dark like prison-bars. Was it perhaps, on these sunset-skies that Christina Rossetti gazed when she wrote her most inspired poems? And was it from the small window of her gloomy little house in Torrington Square, "the small upper back bedroom whose only outlook," her biographer says, "was to the tall dingy walls of adjacent houses;" was it from here that,--looking with rapt gaze over to the neighbouring stables and mews,--she saw, in fancy, the angel choirs of which she wrote? "... Multitudes--multitudes--stood up in bliss, Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair; With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace, And crowned and haloed hair."