re the subject dealt with impinged most upon the spirit of mediaeval
Catholicism. Perhaps Catholicism is itself essentially mediaeval, and
perhaps a man cannot possibly be, what the _Catholic World_ article
called Rossetti, a "mediaeval artist heart and soul," without partaking
of a strong religious feeling that is primarily Catholic--so much were
the religion and art of the middle ages knit each to each. Yet, upon
reading the article, I doubted one of the writer's inferences, namely,
that Rossetti had inherited a Catholic devotion to the Madonna. Not his
_Ave_ only seemed to me to live in an atmosphere of tender and sensitive
devotion, but I missed altogether in it, as in other poems of Rossetti,
that old, continual, and indispensable Catholic note of mystic Divine
love lost in love of humanity which, I suppose, Mr. Arnold would call
anthropomorphism. Years later, when I came to know Rossetti personally,
I perceived that the writer of the article in question had not made
a bad shot for the truth. True it was, that he had inherited a strong
religious spirit--such as could only be called Catholic--inherited
I say, for, though from his immediate parents, he assuredly did not
inherit any devotion to the Madonna, his own submission to religious
influences was too unreasoning and unquestioning to be anything but
intuitive. Despite some worldly-mindedness, and a certain shrewdness in
the management of the more important affairs of daily life, Rossetti's
attitude towards spiritual things was exactly the reverse of what we
call Protestant. During the last months of his life, when the prospect
of leaving the world soon, and perhaps suddenly, impressed upon his
mind a deep sense of his religious position, he yielded himself up
unhesitatingly to the intuitive influences I speak of; and so far from
being touched by the interminable controversies which have for ages been
upsetting and uprearing creeds, he seemed both naturally incapable of
comprehending differences of belief, and unwilling to dwell upon them
for an instant. Indeed, he constantly impressed me during the last days
of his life with the conviction, that he was by religious bias of nature
a monk of the middle ages.

As to the article in _The Catholic Magazine_ I thought I perceived from
a curious habit of biblical quotation that it must have been written by
an Ecclesiastic. A remark in it to the effect that old age is usually
more indulgent than middle life to the work of