a man the right to rule not others but himself, only the mockery and inexplicable vagaries of temper remained. When I knew him, Rossetti was devoid of resolution. At that moment at which he had finally summoned up every available and imaginable reason for pursuing any particular course, his purpose wavered and his heart gave way. When I knew him, Rossetti was destitute of cheerfulness or content. At that instant, at which the worst of his shadowy fears had been banished by some fortuitous occurrence that lit up with an unceasing radiation of hope every prospect of life, he conjured out of its very brightness fresh cause for fear and sadness. True, indeed, these may have been no more than symptoms of those later phenomena which came of disease, and foreshadowed death. Other minds may reduce to a statement of cause and effect what I am content to offer as fact. Upon settling with Rossetti in July 1881, I perceived that his health was weaker. His tendency to corpulence had entirely disappeared, his feebleness of step had become at certain moments painfully apparent, and his temper occasionally betrayed signs of bitterness. To myself, personally, he was at this stage as genial as of old, or if for an instant he gave vent to an unprovoked outburst of wrath, he would far more than atone for it by a look of inexpressible remorse and some feeling words of regret, whereof the import sometimes was-- I wish you were indeed my son, for though then I should still have no right to address you so, I should at least have some right to expect your forgiveness. In such moods of more than needful solicitude for one’s acutest sensibilities, Rossetti was absolutely irresistible. As I have said, the occupant of this great gloomy house, in which I had now become a resident, had rarely been outside its doors for two years; certainly never afoot, and only in carriages with his friends. Upon the second night of my stay, I announced my intention of taking a walk on the Chelsea embankment, and begged him to accompany me. To my amazement he yielded, and every night for a week following, I succeeded in inducing him to repeat the now unfamiliar experience. It was obvious enough to himself that he walked totteringly, with infinite expenditure of physical energy, and returned in a condition of exhaustion that left him prostrate for an hour afterwards. The root of all this evil was soon apparent. He was exceeding with the chloral, and little as I expected or desired to exercise a moral guardianship over the habits of this great man, I found myself insensibly dropping into that office.