e lived a Scotchman by the name of Thomas Carlyle, and in the
same block where afterwards lived George Eliot, and where she died. He
wanted his brother and sisters and his mother to share his prosperity, and
so he planned that they should all come and live with him; and besides,
Mr. Swinburne and George Meredith were to come, too. It was to be one big
happy family. But the good old mother knew the human heart better than did
her brilliant son. She has left on record these words: "Yes, my children
all have talent, great talent; I only wish they had a little commonsense!"

So for the present she remained with William, her daughters, and her two
aged unmarried sisters in the plain old house in Albany Street. But Dante
Gabriel moved to Cheyne Walk, and began that craze for collecting blue
china that has swept like a blight over the civilized world. His
collection was sold for three thousand five hundred dollars some years
after--to pay his debts--less than one-half of what it had cost him. Yet
when he had money he generously divided it with the folks up in Albany
Street. But by and by William, too, got to making money, and the quarters
at Number One Hundred Sixty-six were abandoned for something better.

William was married and had taken a house of his own--I don't know where.
The rest of the household consisted of the widow, Mrs. Rossetti, Miss
Charlotte Lydia Polidori, Maria and Christina--and seven cats. And so we
find this family of five women living in peace and comfort, with their
books and pictures and cats, at Thirty Torrington Square, in a drowsy,
faded, ebb-tide mansion. Maria was never strong; she fell into a decline
and passed away. The management of the household then devolved on
Christina. Her burdens must have been heavy in those days, or did she make
them light by cheerful doing? She gave up society, refused the thought of
marriage, and joined that unorganized sisterhood of mercy--the women who
toil that others may live. But she sang at her work, as the womanly woman
ever does. For although a woman may hold no babe in her arms, the lullaby
leaps to her tongue, and at eventide she sings songs to the children of
her brain--sweet idealization of the principle of mother-love.

Christina Rossetti comes to us as one of those splendid stars that are so
far away they are seen only at rare intervals. She never posed as a
"literary person"--reading her productions at four-o'clocks, and winning
high praise from the unb