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 less importance than the rocks.
The earth on which men have lived, where the work of their hand is
evident, with all the sentiment of the presence of man, with smoke
arising from numberless homes, is foreign to Mr. Hone. The monsters