say, That is a painter, that a poet, and that a scholar. All the self-conscious dignity of a President of the Royal Academy is expressed in the picture of Leighton, and his look is as cold as marble; while the eyes of Burne-Jones seem mystically veiled, as though they were gazing into the past. Indeed, the way in which Watts grasps his characters is masterly beyond conception. Amongst the old painters Tintoretto and Moroni might be compared with him most readily, while Van Dyck is the least like him of all. In opposition to the poetic fantasy of Burne-Jones dallying with legendary lore, an element of brooding thought is characteristic of the large compositions of Watts, a meditative absorption in ideas which provoke the intellect to further activity by their mysterious allegorical suggestions. Just as he makes an approach to the old Venetians in external form, he is divided from them in the inward burden of his work by a severity and hardiness characteristic of the Northern spirit, a predominance of idea seldom met with amongst Southern masters, and a profoundly sad way of thought in which one sees the stamp of the nineteenth century. Apart from the purely artistic effect of his work, he tried to make his pictures serve as a stimulus to deeper thought and meditation: "The end of art," he writes, "must be the exposition of some weighty principle of spiritual significance, the illustration of a great truth." "The Spirit of Christianity," the only one of his works which has a religious tone, displays a youth throned upon the clouds, with children nestling at his feet. His powerful head is bent upwards, and his right hand opened wide. In "Orpheus and Eurydice" he has chosen the moment when Orpheus turns round to behold Eurydice turning pale and sinking to the earth, to be once more swallowed by Hades. The lyre drops from his hands, and with a gesture of despair he draws the form of his wife to his heart in a last, eternal embrace. "Artemis and Endymion" is a scene in which a tall female figure in silvery shining vesture bends over the sleeping shepherd, throwing herself into the curve of a sickle.