_J. N. Strudwick_, who worked first under Spencer Stanhope and then under Burne-Jones, was more consistent in his fidelity to the pre-Raphaelite principles. His pictures have the same delicate, enervated mysticism, and the same thoughtful, dreamy poetry, as those of his elders in the school. By preference he paints slender, pensive girlish figures, with the sentiment of Burne-Jones, taking his motive from some passage in a poet. In a picture called "Elaine" the heroine is mournfully seated in a lofty room of a mediæval palace. Another of his works reveals three girls occupied with music. Or a knight strewn with roses lies asleep in a maiden's lap. Or again, there is St. Cecilia standing with her Seraphina before a Roman building. Strudwick does not possess the spontaneity of his master. The childlike, angular effect at which he aims often seems slightly weak and mawkish; and occasionally his painting is somewhat diffident, especially when he paints in the architectural detail and rich artistic accessories, and stipples with a very fine brush. But his works are so exquisite and delicate, so precious and æsthetic, that they must be reckoned amongst the most characteristic performances of the New pre-Raphaelitism. One of his larger compositions he has named "Bygone Days." There is a man musing over the memories of his life, as he sits upon a white marble throne in front of a long white marble wall, amid an evening landscape. He stretches out his arms after the vanished years of his youth, the years when love smiled upon him; but Time, a winged figure like Orcagna's _Morte_, divides him from the goddess of love, swinging his scythe with a threatening gesture. "The Past," a slender matron in a black robe, covers her face lamenting. In Strudwick's most celebrated picture, "The Ramparts of God's House," there is a man standing at the threshold of heaven, naked as a Greek athlete. His earthly fetters lie shattered at his feet. Angels receive him, marvellously spiritual beings filled with a lovely simplicity and revealing ineffable profundity of soul, beings who partake of Fra Angelico almost as much as of Ellen Terry. Their expression is quiet and peaceful. Instead of marvelling at the new-comer, they gaze with their eyes green as a water-sprite's meditatively into illimitable space. The architecture in the background is entirely symbolical, as in the pictures of Giotto. A little house with a golden roof and gilded mediæval reliefs is inhabited by a dense throng of little angels, as if it were a Noah's-ark. The colour is rich and sonorous, as in the youthful works of Carlo Crivelli. [Illustration: G. F. WATTS IN HIS GARDEN. (_By permission, from a photograph by A. Frazer-Tytler, Esq._)]