"On that day which fulfilled the year since my lady had been made of the citizens of eternal life, remembering me of her as I sat alone, I betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets. And while I did thus, chancing to turn my head I perceived that some were standing beside me, to whom I should have given courteous welcome, and that they were observing what I did: also I learned afterwards that they had been there awhile before I perceived them. Perceiving whom, I arose for salutation and said: 'Another was with me.'" The same incident has been commemorated by Robert Browning in his "One Word More."] At about the same time that he painted "Mary's Girlhood," Rossetti did a portrait in oils of his father, his first work of this kind. He also drew an outline design of a lute player and his lady, a subject taken from Coleridge's "Genevieve"; a pen-and-ink drawing of "Gretchen in the Chapel," with Mephistopheles whispering in her ear, and "The Sun may shine and we be cold," a sketch of a girl near a window, apparently a prisoner. To this period also belongs the important pen-and-ink drawing, "Il Saluto di Beatrice," representing in two parts the meeting of Dante and Beatrice, first in a street of Florence and secondly in Paradise. The most important of Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelite work during the two years following 1848 is the "Ecce Ancilla Domini," quite in keeping in sentiment with the picture of the previous year. Both these pictures are a little timid in treatment. In the "Ecce Ancilla Domini," the Virgin clad in white is sitting on her bed, as if just awakened, and sees with awe the full length of an angel, also clad in white, floating in front of her and holding a white lily in his hand. The walls are white but there is a blue curtain behind the Virgin's head and a red embroidery on its frame is standing in the foreground at the foot of the bed. The drapery of the angel is a little stiff and the whole effect rather hard, but notwithstanding this youthful fault the whole work is restrained and full of charm both in drawing and colour. This picture was exhibited in 1850 at the same Free Exhibition, which was moved this year from Hyde Park Corner to Portland Place. The Pre-Raphaelites were now attacked by the press still more fiercely than before, but they found a champion in Ruskin who took up their defence in a series of letters to the _Times_, and in so doing laid down an elaborate statement of principles. Thus it came about that the broad and possibly nebulous ideas of the Brethren became transmuted into hard and fast rules, which the young painters had to accept, partly out of gratitude to their benefactor, partly because they agreed with them. Rossetti painted only three pictures strictly according to the Pre-Raphaelite rules. Curiously enough the best genuine Pre-Raphaelite picture is "Work" by Ford Madox Brown, who not believing in cliques refused to join the group.