any other artists of their age they realized the
unity of art and the dependence of one branch upon another. Painting
should go hand in hand with sculpture, and both minister to
architecture. So the world might hope once more to see public buildings
nobly planned and no less nobly decorated, as in the past it saw the
completion of the Parthenon and the churches of mediaeval Italy. It was
unfortunate that they received so little encouragement from the public,
and that their example had so narrow an influence. St. Paul's can show
its Wellington monument, Lincoln's Inn its fresco; but year after year
subject-pictures continued to be painted on an ambitious scale, which
after a few months' exhibition on the walls of Burlington House passed
to their tomb in provincial museums, or reappeared as ghosts in the
sale-room only to fetch a derisory price and to illustrate the fickle
vagaries in the public taste.

In the early life of George Frederick Watts, who was born in a quiet
street in West Marylebone, there are few incidents to narrate, there is
little brightness to enliven the tale. His father, a maker of musical
instruments, was poor; his mother died early; his home-life was
overshadowed by his own ill-health and the uncertain moods of other
members of the family. His education was casual and consisted mostly of
reading books under the guidance of his father, who had little solid
learning, but refined tastes and an inventive disposition. In his
Sundays at home, where the Sabbatarian rule limited his reading, he
became familiar with the stories of the Old Testament; he discovered for
himself the Waverley Novels and Pope's translation of the _Iliad_; and
he began from early years to use his pencil with the eager and
persistent enthusiasm which marks the artist born.

For a rich artistic nature it was a starved life, but he made the most
of such chances as came in his way. He was barely ten years old when he
found his way to the studio of a sculptor named William Behnes, a man
of Hanoverian extraction, an indifferent sculptor but possessed of a
real talent for drawing; and from his more intellectual brother, Charles
Behnes, he learnt to widen his interest in literature. In this halting
and irregular process of education he received help, some years later,
from another friend of foreign birth, Nicholas Wanostrocht, a Belgian,
who under the assumed name of 'Felix' became a leading authority on the
game of cricket. Wanostrocht