-"a thin palm like foam of the sea," "a white body," or in such
vague phrases, until it seems a spirit is praised and not flesh and
blood. I remember the faces of women and children in his pictures where
everything is blurred or obscured, save faces which have a nameless
charm. They look at you with long-remembered glances out of the brooding
hour of twilight, out of reverie and dream. It is the hidden heart which
looks out, and we love these women and children for this, for surely the
heart's desire is its own secret.

His portraits of men have kindred qualities, and the magnificent picture
of John O'Leary shows him at his best. It is itself a symbol of the
movement of which O'Leary was the last great representative. The stately
patriarchal head of the old chief is the head of the idealist, so sure
of his own truth that he must act, and, if needs be, become the
martyr for his ideal. But the delicate hands are not the hands of an
empire-breaker. This portrait will probably find its last resting-place
in the National Gallery, where, with a curious irony, the Government
places the portraits of the dead rebels who gave its statesmen many an
anxious day and many a nightmare; and so it will go on, perhaps, until
the contemplation of these pictures inspires some boy with an equal or
better head and a stronger hand, and then--.

But to return to Mr. Yeats. Some earlier pictures show him attempting to
paint directly the ideal world of romance and poetry; yet interesting
as these are, they do not convey the same impression of mystery as the
pictures of today. Indeed, the light seen behind or through a veil
is always more suggestive than the unveiled light. It may be that
the spirit is a formless breath which pervades form, and it is better
revealed as a light in the eyes, as a brooding expression, than by the
choice of ancient days and other-world subjects, where the shapes can be
molded to ideal forms by the artist's will. However it is, it is certain
that Millet, the realist, is more spiritual than Moreau or Burne-Jones
for all their archaic design; and Mr. Yeats, who, as his King Goll
shows, might have been a great romantic painter, has probably chosen
wisely, and has painted more memorable pictures than if he had gone back
to the fairyland of Celtic mythology.

To turn from Yeats to Hone is to turn from the lighted hearth to the
wilderness. Humanity is very far away, or is huddled up under immense
skies, where it seems of