the gold for very inferior currency. Without attempting to give undue credit to Rossetti, or denying that collateral influences--notably that of Walter Crane--had their share in the revival of the nineties, there can be no doubt that the strongest of the younger 'decorative' artists to-day are still fascinated by Rossetti--no less irresistibly than 'the young Burne-Jones' was influenced in 1855. Therefore the importance of these ten designs cannot be exaggerated. Whether you regard their influence as unwholesome, and regret the morbidity of the school that founded itself on them, or prefer to see in them the germ of a style entirely English in its renaissance, which has already spread over that Continent which one had deemed inoculated against any British epidemic, the fact remains that Rossetti is the golden milestone wherefrom all later work must needs be measured. No doubt the superb work of Frederick Sandys, had it been more accessible to the younger artists when the new impetus to decorative black-and-white began to attract a popular audience, would have found hardly as ardent disciples. [Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI You should have wept her yesterday 'THE PRINCE'S PROGRESS' 1866] * * * * * M. J. LAWLESS (born 1837, died 1864).--This artist, faithful to the best tradition of the pre-Raphaelite illustrators, seems to have left few personal memories. Born in 1837, a son of Barry Lawless, a Dublin solicitor, he was educated at Prior Park School, Bath, and afterwards attended several drawing schools, and was for a time a pupil of Henry O'Neil, R.A. He died August 6, 1864. Mr. Edward Walford, who contributes a short notice of Matthew James Lawless to the _Dictionary of National Biography_, has only the barest details to record. Nor do others, who knew him intimately, remember anything more than the ordinary routine of a short and uneventful life. But his artistic record is not meagre. In contemporary criticism we find him ranked with Millais and Sandys; not as equal to either, but as a worthy third. A fine picture of his, _The Sick Call_ (from the Leathart Collection), was exhibited again in 1895 at the Guildhall.