hastily that her thin taper is extinguished on the way. She enters her little chamber, kneels down, repeats the prayer, and rises to her feet, taking off her finery and loosening her hair. The clear moonlight streams through the window, throwing a ghostly illumination over the little images of saints in the room, falling like a caress upon the tender young breast of the girl, playing upon her folded hands, and touching her long, fair hair with a radiance like a vaporous glory. In the shadow of the bed she sees him whom she loves. Motionless, as in a dream, she stands, nor ventures to turn lest the fair vision should vanish. "The Deliverance of a Heretic condemned to the Stake," "Joan of Arc," "Cinderella," "The Last Rose," that dreamy picture of romantic grace, "The Childhood of Sir Walter Raleigh," and the picture of the hoary Moses, supported by Hur and Aaron, watching from the mountain-top the victory of Joshua, were the principal works achieved in the later years of the master. But when these pictures were executed England had become accustomed to honour Millais, not as a pre-Raphaelite, but as her greatest portrait painter. [Illustration: MILLAIS. THOMAS CARLYLE.] His portrait of himself explains this transformation. With his white linen jacket and his fresh sunburnt face Sir John Millais does not look in the least like a "Romanticist," scarcely like a painter; he has rather the air of being a wealthy landowner. He was a man of a sound and straightforward nature, a great and energetic master, conscious of his aim, but a poet in Ruskin's sense of the word is what he has never been. His pre-Raphaelitism was only a flirtation. His methods of thought were too concrete, his hand too powerful, for him to have lingered always in the world of the English poets, or endured the precise style of the pre-Raphaelites. "Millais will 'go far' if he will only change his boots," About had written on the occasion of the World Exhibition of 1855; when that of 1867 was opened Millais appeared in absolutely new shoes. The great exhibition of 1857 in Manchester, which made known for the first time how many of the works of Velasquez were hidden in English private collections, had helped Millais to the knowledge of himself. From the naturalism of the Quattrocentisti he made a transition to the naturalism of Velasquez.