The “unlucky pickle” into which my brother had got was that, as the tenant of No. 72 Newman Street decamped without payment of rent, the furniture &c. of Rossetti, who was sub-tenant of a studio there, were under seizure for the tenant’s default. The picture here mentioned was _Kate the Queen_. [50 Charlotte Street, London. 1850--? September.] Dear Aunt Margaret, Many thanks for your kind gift, which reached me this morning through Mamma. I need scarcely tell you that it comes very àpropos, since I have not come out of the late unlucky pickle without some expense,--or, rather I fear I _shall_ not, since as yet I cannot say I have lost anything, as in any case I should have had to pay my rent to some one. But I fear the bad part is yet to come. I am glad you liked the sketch of my picture, which is itself in progress. The size is very large--seven feet and a half by four feet. There will thus be plenty of scope to put your present to its use in the procuring models, which I shall proceed to do as soon as I get to work again--that is, I hope, not later than Monday. I remain, my dear Aunt, Your affectionate nephew, D. G. ROSSETTI. LETTER VIII. TO JOHN TUPPER. I cannot now say what Mr. Tupper’s “pet theory” may have been; apparently (from some law of optics) that the real tint of foliage is green, even when the eye sees it of some different colour. The subject of my brother’s picture was to be _The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in the Garden of Eden_: but the landscape background which he now painted was finished up years afterwards for a subject of quite another kind, named _The Bower-meadow_. High Street, Sevenoaks. Friday evening [October 1850.] Dear Jack, Before ever I saw your note to Hunt of this morning, you had already been forcibly recalled to my mind, on arriving here, by the desire that I should be endowed with the privileges that would result from a pet theory of yours. The fact is, between you and me, that the leaves on the trees I have to paint here appear red, yellow, &c., to my eyes; and, as of course I know them on that account to be really of a vivid green, it seems rather annoying that I cannot do them so; my subject shrieking aloud for Spring.