This, indeed, is the pervasive temperament and sentiment of our own age. It is our own inward spirit that gazes upon us as though from an enchanted mirror with the mien of a phantom. [Illustration: _Dixon, photo._ STRUDWICK. THY TUNEFUL STRINGS WAKE MEMORIES. (_By permission of W. Imrie, Esq., the owner of the picture._)] And just as he remodels the entire spirit of old myths, he converts the figures which he has borrowed into an artistic form of his own, and, without hesitation, subordinates them in type and physical build and bearing to the new part they have to play. [Illustration: _Cassell & Co._ STRUDWICK. GENTLE MUSIC OF A BYGONE DAY. (_By permission of John Dixon, Esq., the owner of the picture._)] [Illustration: _Dixon, photo._ STRUDWICK. THE RAMPARTS OF GOD'S HOUSE. (_By permission of Wm. Imrie, Esq., the owner of the picture._)] His pictures differ in their whole character from those of the masters of the Quattrocento. In Botticelli, also, the young foliage grows green and flaunts in its exuberant abundance; but in Burne-Jones the vegetation suggests one of those immense forests in Sumatra or Java. All the plants are luxuriant and resplendent in colour, and seem to swoon in their own opulent, plethoric life. Every tree creates an impression of having shot up in swift and wanton growth under a tropical sun. Rank parasitic plants trail from stem to stem, and garlands of climbers grow in a luxuriant tangle round the branches. And in proportion as the vegetation is luxuriant and sensuous the human figures are wasted and languishing. The severe charm, rigidity, and demureness of the Quattrocento is weakened into lackadaisical melancholy. The dreamy bliss of Botticelli is transposed into sanctified solemnity, delicate fragility, a voluptuous lassitude, a gentle weariness of the world. When he paints ancient sibyls, they are touched at once by the unearthly asceticism of the Middle Ages seeking refuge from the world, and the melancholy, anæmic lassitude of the close of the nineteenth century. If he paints a Venus she does not stand out victorious in her nudity, but wears a heavy brocaded robe, and around her lie the symbols of Christian martyrdom, palms, and perhaps a lyre. It is not the fairness of her body that makes her goddess of love, but only the dim mystery of her radiant eyes. She is not the Olympian who entered into frolicsome adventure with the war-god Mars amid the laughter of the heavenly gods, for in her conventional humiliation she is rather like the beautiful dæmon of the Middle Ages who, upon her journey into exile, passed by the cross where the Son of Man was hanging, and tasted all the bitterness of the years. In their delicate features his Madonnas have a gentle sadness rarely found in the Italian masters. Even the angels, who were roguish and wayward in the Quattrocento, do their spiriting with ceremonious gravity, and a subdued melancholy underlies their devotional reverence.