bright joy of colour, the half-barbaric motley which one finds in old miniatures. It is only when one studies the brilliant details, used merely in the service of a great psychological effect, that this outwardly repellent picture takes shape as a powerful work of art, a work of profound human truth. Nothing is sacrificed to pose, graceful show, or histrionic affectation. Like the German masters of the fifteenth century, Madox Brown makes no attempt to dilute what is ugly, nor did Holbein either when he painted the leprous beggars in his "Altar to St. Sebastian." Every figure, whether fair or foul, is, in bearing, expression, and gesture, a character of robust and rigorous hardihood, and has that intense fulness of life which is compressed in those carved wooden figures of mediæval altars: the aged Lear with his weather-beaten face and his waving beard; the envious Regan; the cold, cruel, ambitious Goneril; Albany, with his fair, inexpressive head; the gross, brutal Cornwall; Burgundy, biting his nails in indecision; and Cordelia, in her touching, bashful grace. And to this angular frankness of the primitive masters he unites the profound learning of the modern historian. All the archæological details, the old British costumes, jewels, modes of wearing the hair, weapons, furniture, and hangings, have been studied with the accuracy of Menzel. He knows nothing of the academic rules of composition, and his robes fall naturally without the petty appendage of fair folds and graceful motives. [Illustration: MILLAIS. THE HUGUENOT.] The picture in which he treated the balcony scene in Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ is outwardly repellent, like "Lear and Cordelia," but what a hollow effect is made by Makart's theatrical heroics beside this aboriginal sensuousness, this intensity of expression! Juliet's dress has fallen from her shoulders, and, devoid of will and thought, with closed lids, half-naked, and thrilling in every fibre with the lingering joy of the hours that have passed, she abandons herself to the last fiery embraces of Romeo, who in stormy haste is feeling with one foot for the ladder of ropes. He has solved a yet more difficult problem in the picture "Elijah and the Widow." [Illustration: _Brothers, photo._ MILLAIS. AUTUMN LEAVES.]