usually dine in my studio and in my painting coat!” I had before me a five hours’ journey to London, so that in order to reach Chelsea at 6 P.M., I must needs set out at mid-day, but oblivious of this necessity, Rossetti had actually posted a fourth letter on the morning of the day on which we were to meet begging me not on any account to talk, in the course of our interview, of a certain personal matter upon which we had corresponded. This fourth and final message came to hand the morning after the meeting, when I had the satisfaction to reflect that (owing more perhaps to the plethora of other subjects of interest than to any suspicion of its being tabooed) I had luckily eschewed the proscribed topic. Cheyne Walk was unknown to me at the time in question, except as the locality in and near which many men and women eminent in literature resided. It seems hard to realise that this was the case as recently as two years ago, now that so short an interval has associated it in one’s mind with memories which seem to cover a large part of one’s life. The Walk is not now exactly as picturesque as it appears in certain familiar old engravings; the new embankment and the gardens that separate it from the main thoroughfare have taken something from its beauty, but it still possesses many attractions, and among them a look of age which contrasts agreeably with the spic-and-span newness of neighbouring places. I found Rossetti’s house, No. 16, answering in external appearances to the frank description he gave of it. It stands about mid-way between the Chelsea pier and the new redbrick mansions erected on the Chelsea embankment. It seems to be the oldest house in the Walk, and the exceptional proportions of its gate-piers, and the weight and mass of its gate and railings, suggests that probably at some period it stood alone, and commanded as grounds a large part of the space now occupied by the adjoining residences. Behind the house, during eighteen years of Rossetti’s occupancy, there was a garden of almost an acre in extent, covering by much the larger part of the space enclosed by a block of four streets forming a square. At No. 4 Maclise had lived and died; at the same house George Eliot, after her marriage with Mr. Cross, had come to live; at No. 5, in the second street to the westward, Thomas Carlyle was still living, and a little beyond Cheyne Row stood the modest cottage wherein Turner died. Rossetti’s house had to me the appearance of a plain Queen Anne erection, much mutilated by the introduction of unsightly bay-windows; the brickwork seemed to be falling into decay; the paint to be in serious need of renewal; the windows to be dull with the accumulation of the dust of years; the sills to bear the suspicion of cobwebs; the angles of the steps and the untrodden flags of the courtyard to be here and there overgrown with moss and weeds; and round the walls and up the reveals of doors and windows were creeping the