Here we leave our artist at work finishing a picture which he is painting, with a loving fidelity, worthy of the subject. A beautiful woman like that vignette which we saw in the College Green (when Arthur Phillips discovered that he had not a rival in Lionel Hammerton) is sitting beside a cradle where a baby lies fast asleep, with one of its little round arms outside the lace coverlet. By the mother’s knee is a curly-headed boy, making his first acquaintance with picture-books. This study from life represents the artist’s wife and children. Whilst he is putting in the finishing touches to the accessories Mrs. Phillips is playing a rippling, dreamy sonata on the piano close by. In at the open window comes the warm breath of the summer wind laden with rare perfumes, the music of birds, the faint tinkle of sheep-bells, and full of suggestive whisperings about the summer fields of rustling corn, and the newly gathered hay, the wild flowers in the green and sunny lanes, the clear rippling brooks that glide by luxurious hedge-rows, and all the multifarious rural beauties that are known to summer winds. Free from all the ordinary cares of the world, with faculties cultivated and imagination influenced and softened by the loving study of art, blessed in the love of the one woman who had been the dream of his life, as husband and father, Arthur Phillips had realised far more than all his dearest hopes. And Phœbe,--that frank, confiding girl who had loved him all along, and told him so when he had been courageous enough to ask the question,--her life was as near an approach to the perfect happiness of which we spoke in some preceding pages as it is possible for mortal existence to be. Arthur had realised to the full that touchingly simple saying of Anderson’s, that “people had a great deal of trouble to go through, and then they became famous.” The only shadows which fell upon the greensward of their path in life’s highway were those which fell from the memory of others’ sorrows; but, like the shadows of summer clouds upon the green and flowery landscape, these only made the way more beautiful, and heightened still further the glory of that halo of gratitude which shone about their peaceful lives. THE END. BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. Transcriber’s Notes Italics are indicated as _italics_. Apparent typographical errors have been changed. Inconsistent word hyphenation and spelling have been regularized. Page 21: “moral home iufluences” was changed to “moral home influences”. Page 75: “and he joked the old” was changed to “and he joked with the old”. Page 84: “ethereal colums” was changed to “ethereal columns”. Page 178: “ent home until after the murder” was changed to “sent home until after the murder”. Page 221: “the room were the dead one lay” was changed to “the room where the dead one lay”.