ambitious and as self-confident as Watts have started in life with a programme of equally high endeavor, only to find, after years of as strenuous exertion, that their goal was unattainable and their energy misdirected?

Was there very much difference, for instance, between the aims of Watts and poor Benjamin Robert Haydon, a man who, his suicide notwithstanding, was surely one of the bravest souls that ever lived? He was not a great genius, but how was he to know that when he started in life with the strongest possible confidence in himself, and was for many years encouraged in his faith by devoted disciples and many men and women of light and leading? Watts was right; Haydon was wrong. Is that all that there is to say? Perhaps so from a moral point of view, both being made and conditioned as they were; and yet one stands forever as an example, the other as a warning. Let us admire Watts without throwing stones at Haydon, especially as it seems possible that Watts himself may have learnt not a little wisdom and restraint from Haydon's tumultuous career. If, however, we are not competent to be their moral judges, we may be permitted to examine a few of the differences between them. As Mr. Watts once said, Haydon's pictures were like himself; at least both were violent, and this assuredly Watts never was either in his life or in his art. Haydon was vainglorious, but this is an epithet no one would apply to Watts, although he is one of the most self-directed of men. Haydon had no patience, but Watts has known how to wait for the development of opportunity and his own gifts. One more contrast only, but this, from a practical point of view, is perhaps the most important of all. Watts, while retaining his passion for poetical composition, has not scorned portraitpainting as Haydon did. On the contrary, it has always seemed to him one of the noblest employments of the artistic faculty; and if no one had ever proved it before, his own portraits would be sufficient to do so. It may be added that fresh proof of the fact was needed when he commenced to paint, and that he has done more, perhaps, than any other painter of his generation to raise this branch of art to its proper level.

It is of poor Barry as well as poor

Haydon that we are reminded when we see the noble fresco of "Justice" (forty feet high by forty-five feet long), painted by Watts on the north wall of the Hall of Lincoln's Inn, and think of the offer he made to cover, for the bare cost of scaffolding and colors, the walls of the great hall of the Railway Station at Euston with paintings illustrating the "Progress of Commerce." This great offer was refused, and with the refusal practically ended the vastest of Watts's dreams—z.e., the vastest in conception; but, fortunately, no discouragement could touch the purity of his intentions or the nobility of his thoughts, and, if he could not cover acres of wall with heroic designs, he could employ his imagination on works which expressed the very best of him upon a smaller scale. It may even be contended that the very best of him could not have been known if he had spent his life in huge heroic compositions. At all events, we should have missed much that we prize-not least, the unparalleled series of portraits of great men.

Here I would speak only of the great qualities of these portraits as illustrating the great qualities of the man who drew them. The greatest of these, perhaps, is sympathy; sympathy not only with the character of his sitter, whoever he may be, but with the most varied and complicated elements-physical, moral, and intellectual of the greatest men of his time, whether statesmen, philosophers, philanthropists, poets, soldiers, artists, or what not.

This determination to present the whole man, not only the aspect of him which appeals most to the painter's artistic faculty, or seems to afford the greatest opportunity to display his masterly skill, is evidence of a self-restraint which must exalt Watts's character as a man if not as an artist. The subordination of self to subject is not a common or a fashionable virtue in modern artists, though all do not carry the opposite principle into effect so thoroughly as the young man who once boasted to me that he had made a railway journey with some one he had painted a few weeks before and had not recognized him till his "subject" claimed acquaintance.

The desire of Watts to express the inner spirit of his conceptions is so strong that the technical quality of the workmanship

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becomes a matter of minor concern; or, at least, would seem to do so, for on this subject he presents something of an enigHe appreciates beauty of execution in the pictures of others, and is not blind to it in his own. He once pointed out to me a portion of his portrait of Panizzi as one of the finest pieces (I am not sure if it was not the very finest piece) of painting he had ever executed.

On another occasion, when I was prais

ing the draughtsmanship of his exquisite chalk drawing of Lady Mount Temple, he said lightly, "There is no difficulty in drawing." Possibly he was thinking how much more difficult it was to imbue a work of art with the right feeling, and cared little to be lauded for what ought to be taken for granted as part of an artist's necessary equipment, and not made a subject of pride by the artist or of praise by others. There cannot, at all events, be any doubt that anything like an obvious

display of professional accomplishment is distasteful to Watts. I told him one day that I had chosen as one of the illustrations of an article upon him a portrait of a little girl. I had chosen it for many reasons, but partly on account of its wonderful vivacity and winning beauty, and partly on account of the extraordinary skill in execution, every touch being clear and confident as a Gainsborough or a Sargent. To my surprise, he said, "I am sorry you chose that," and when I asked him why, he replied, with something like irritation, "Because it's dexterous, and I hate dexterity."

In the history alike of Watts's life and of Watts's art there is nothing that is small. The record of great thoughts and great men has been his principal object, and love of humanity and his country the unfailing source of his energy.

At what time he first conceived the idea of painting his famous series of historic portraits I cannot say precisely, but if we take the Guizot of 1848 as about the earliest of them, he has spent more than half a century already in carrying it into execution, and it must number now about fifty portraits in all. Not the least notable fact about the portraits, especially in relation to the artist's character, is that he painted them for himself and not for others. He chose the sitters, not they their painter. They were painted for himself, at his own desire, and therefore, of course, without payment. Nor was it only the portraits that he may be said to have painted in the first instance for himself. One of the earliest and best of his poetical dreams, certainly in my opinion the finest of all treatments of its great subject, the "Paolo and Francesca," still hangs on the walls of that gallery (adjoining his London house) which has for so many years been open for the delight and enlightenment of the London public of all classes. That gallery, notwithstanding its owner has given away so many of his pictures in recent years, is still full of his own works in great variety; and it may be said generally that he has painted to give, and not to sell, though he will tell you with a smile that the money he has received for private portraits and other works has been very useful.

I have been told that his first intention was to leave to the nation the series of

portraits of great Englishmen, as well as other pictures remaining in his possession at his death-a truly royal bequest of a life's labor. Nor is there any reason to suppose that he will not do so now; but his final legacy will be of much more modest dimensions than it would have been a few years ago. It would seem as though the patience of his generosity had been tired by his own longevity, and he has preferred to give to the nation in his lifetime a large proportion of the inheritance designed for it. The private munificence of others has of late years provided great national buildings to enshrine such treasures, and at the National Portrait Gallery in St. Martin's Place, and the National Gallery of British Art on the Thames Embankment, there are hung some forty-five in all of Watts's paintingstwenty-six portraits and nineteen pictures of his imagination, all, I think, except the "Psyche," which belongs to the Chantrey bequest, presented by himself. Did any painter ever make his nation so noble a present? and how many men are there who have labored so long and unselfishly for so great an aim?

To those who find selfishness in everything and everybody, it may be allowed that Watts has pursued a life very much in accordance with his own wishes, and is even while alive reaping a reward very much in accordance with his own seeking. Yet even they must admit that his selfishness has been " enlightened," and that he has been content to wait for his reward.

Is there any, can there be any, greater unselfishness than this? Perhaps; and I am not concerned to maintain that Mr. Watts is the most unselfish soul that ever lived; but that he is capable of considerable sacrifices in a great cause may, I think, be allowed by all. That his self-sacrifice is not quite unlimited he would himself admit, for he told me one day that he had been dreaming (either awake or asleep) of a visit by an angel, who promised him that he should complete the most wonderful series of pictures that had ever been painted, a series which should have an extraordinary influence for good on the future of the human race; but there was a condition attached-the painter's name should never be known. "I think," said Mr. Watts, "that I could have accepted that condition for the sake of humanity;