listening to music;
and so the little poem written by the author, and recited by him when
showing the picture newly finished to his friends, describes her. The
face indicates, not a dream of sentiment, like that of "Beatrice," but
rather a rapture. She is "caught on a higher strain." She is a creature
as passionate as tender; more like Juliet than like Miranda; fit to be
the love of a poet, and to reward his song with the overflowing cup of
love. In this figure also beauty melts into feeling. The composition of
color is masterly; in the draperies it is inlaid in opposing fields, by
which means the key of the whole is raised, and the rising rapture of
expression powerfully seconded. Did I not fear to insist too much on
what may be only a private fancy, I should say that these colors
reverberate like some rich orchestral strain of music.

"The Roman Lady reading." This Roman lady might be the mother of the
Gracchi, so stately and of so grand a style is she. But she is a modern,
for she reads from a book. She might be Vittoria Colonna, the loved of
Michel Angelo, so grave, so dignified is her aspect. The whole figure is
reading. A vital intelligence seems to pass from the eyes to the book.
Nothing tender in this woman, who, if a Roman, takes life after the
"high Roman fashion." The beauty and perfect representation of the hands
should be noticed here, as well as in the "Rosalie" and "Beatrice."

"Triumphal Song of Miriam on the Destruction of Pharaoh and his Hosts in
the Red Sea." This is a three-quarter length figure. She stands singing,
with one hand holding the timbrel, the other thrown aloft, the whole
form up-borne by the swelling triumphal song. I hardly know what it is
in this picture which takes one back so far into the world's early days.
The figure is neither antique nor modern; the face is not entirely of
the Hebrew type, but the tossing exultation seems so truly to carry off
the wild thrill of joy when a people is released from bondage, that it
is almost unnecessary to put the words into her mouth,--"Sing ye to the
Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He
thrown into the sea." This figure is dramatically imaginative. In
looking at it, one feels called on to sing triumphal songs with Miriam,
and not to stand idly looking. The magnetism of the artist at the moment
of conception powerfully seizes on the beholder.

"The Valentine" is described by William Ware[A] as follows.

"For t