This tendency of spirit was so novel, this plunge in the tide of mysticism so enchanting, this delicate, archaic fragrance so overwhelming, that a new stage in the culture of modern England dates from the appearance of Rossetti. He borrowed nothing from his contemporaries, and all borrowed from him. There came a time when budding girls in London attired themselves like early Italians from Dante's _Inferno_, when Jellaby Postlethwaite, in Du Maurier's mocking skit, entered a restaurant at luncheon-time, and ordered a glass of water and placed in it a lily which he had brought with him. "What else can I bring?" asked the waiter. "Nothing," he sighed; "that is all I need." There began that æstheticism, that yearning for the lily and that cult of the sunflower, which Gilbert and Sullivan parodied in _Patience_. Swinburne, who has tasted of emotions of the most various realms of spirit, and in his poems set them before the world as though in marvellously chiselled goblets, represents this æsthetic phase of English art in literature. As a painter, Edward Burne-Jones--the greatest of that Oxford circle which gathered round Rossetti in 1856--began to work at the point where Rossetti left off. [Illustration: BURNE-JONES. THE ANNUNCIATION. (_By permission of Mr. F. Hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] [Illustration: _Mansell Photo._ BURNE-JONES. THE MILL.] _Sir Edward Burne-Jones_, who must now be spoken of, was born in Birmingham in August 1833, and was reading theology in Oxford when Rossetti was there painting the mural pictures for the Union. Rossetti attracted him as a flame attracts the moth. As yet he had not had any artistic training, but some of his drawings which were shown to Rossetti by a mutual friend revealed so much poetic force, in spite of their embarrassed method of expression, that the painter-poet entered into communication with him, and allowed him to paint in the Debating Room of the Union a subject from the Arthurian legends, "The Death of Merlin." The picture met with approval, and Burne-Jones abandoned theology, became an intimate friend of Rossetti and the companion of his studies, and went with him to London. There he designed a number of church windows for Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and in 1864 exhibited his first picture, "The Merciful Knight." Later there followed the triptych "Pyramus and Thisbe" and a picture called "The Evening Star," a glimmering landscape through which a gentle spirit in a bronze-green garment is seen to float. But none of these works excited much attention. The small picture exhibited in 1870, "Phyllis and Demophoön," was even thought offensive on account of the "sensuous expression" of the nymph. So Burne-Jones withdrew it, and for many years from that time held aloof from all the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. For seven years his name was never seen in a catalogue. It was only on 1st May 1877, at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery--founded by Sir Coutts