Friday 28th.--Hunt called here. Having been disappointed of a model this morning, he has been catching sparrows in a trap, and painting from them--afterwards decorating their heads with green, and sending them on their way rejoicing.... He understands from Millais that the printseller at Oxford is likely to want not more than some ten or twelve copies of his etching.... Aleck Tupper brought us the second proof of the last sheet.... Thus then, after many changes and counter-changes, will stand the contents of _The Germ_, No. 1.--Woolner’s _My Lady_, Ford Brown’s _Love of Beauty_, Tupper’s _Subject in Art_, Patmore’s _Seasons_, our sister’s _Dreamland_, Gabriel’s _My Sister’s Sleep_ and _Hand and Soul_, my review of _The Bothie_, and sonnet _Her First Season_, Tupper’s _Sketch from Nature_, and our sister’s _An End_. Gabriel wrote a short poem, _Lines and Music_. Saturday 29th.--... Millais ... says he has begun his picture from the childhood of Christ, and is going to have a bed in the carpenter’s shop he paints from, so as to be able to set to work early in the morning.... Millais’s brother continues to paint still life and objects in Nature with great success, and is determined to become a professional Artist. John is to bully him into doing nothing all next summer but paint out in the fields. Gabriel had Maitland to sit for his picture, but found him useless, and he thinks of beginning to paint from me to-morrow.... Sunday 30th.--Gabriel drew-in the head of the Angel (from me) in his picture. In the evening we went to Bateman’s with Millais, who has finished the _Ferdinand and Ariel_, all except something more he means to do to the background. He is going to send to the British Institution a small painting he did at Oxford, of Mr. Drury and a grand-daughter of his, for which he asks me to write an illustrative sonnet.[199] Monday 31st.--To-day before noon fifty copies of _The Germ_ were in the hands of the Publishers; I took home with me twelve.... I wrote to Thomas explaining the circumstances which compelled us to omit his article.... * * * * * 1850.--Tuesday, January 1st.--The fifty India-paper copies of the etching printing off for the magazine having been bound in, I took some of them home: however they are not generally superior to those on common paper. This was the day appointed (in lieu of yesterday, which was found unsuitable) for our first anniversary meeting at Stephens’s--fixed on the last day of 1848 for the last day of each succeeding year. Millais and Woolner were prevented from attending. We settled to what magazines and newspapers to send _The Germ_, and to what private gentlemen and authors--viz.: Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell.... [here comes a tear in the MS.] Saturday 5th.--Gabriel went to see Hunt, who removed this evening from Brompton to Prospect Place, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea....