Realism more searching and more significant than that which Millais sought for and attained in this small canvas would hardly come within the bounds of possibility. But the picture is much more than a simple study of facts; it has an exquisite charm of poetic feeling, and it is conceived with a full measure of the tenderness needed in a representation of the most pathetic of all Shakespeare's heroines. Such a work has a place, definite and indisputable, among the classics of art, and counts as one of the chief masterpieces of the British School.] The years over which his activity as an exponent of pure landscape extended are, however, memorable because they saw the production of some of the most triumphant achievements of his maturer life. With his two landscapes, "Flowing to the Sea," and "Flowing to the River," he exhibited in 1872 his "Hearts are Trumps," a portrait group which has become a modern classic; and in 1873 another wonderful portrait, the three-quarter length of "Mrs. Bischoffsheim." But it was in 1874 that he showed what is in many ways the greatest of all his paintings, "The North-West Passage," a work which, if he had done nothing else of moment, would suffice to place him securely among the master painters of the world. The head of the old man, who is the central figure in the picture, is entirely magnificent, and there is much besides in this canvas which would have been beyond the reach of any one but an artist of almost abnormal power. This was followed in 1875 by his portrait of "Miss Eveleen Tennant," and in 1877 by the "Yeoman of the Guard," which runs "The North-West Passage" close in the race for supremacy. At this time, indeed, his productiveness was extraordinary; subject pictures, portraits, and landscapes appeared in rapid succession, and in all of them he kept to a level of masterly practice which other men reach only occasionally and at rare intervals. Between 1873 and 1879 he painted eight landscapes, all important in scale and interesting in treatment, but after 1879 he produced no more for nearly ten years, when he began a fresh series. He was apparently too busy with portraits and figure subjects to give much time to out-of-door work, and to satisfy the demands made upon him by art collectors and sitters he must have had to work his hardest. Yet popularity did not make him careless, and his hard work diminished neither his freshness of outlook nor his freedom of expression. Conscientiousness as a craftsman was always one of his virtues, and the knowledge that he had a host of admirers ready to accept almost anything he would give them had certainly not the effect of inducing him to lower his standard.