I likewise saw a
copy of a handsome, illustrated edition of Childe Harold, presented by
old John Murray to Mr. Rogers, with an inscription on the fly-leaf,
purporting that it was a token of gratitude from the publisher, because,
when everybody else thought him imprudent in giving four hundred guineas
for the poem, Mr. Rogers told him it would turn out the best bargain he
ever made.
There was a new picture by Millais, the distinguished Pre-Raphaelite
artist, representing a melancholy parting between two lovers. The lady's
face had a great deal of sad and ominous expression; but an old brick
wall, overrun with foliage, was so exquisitely and elaborately wrought
that it was hardly possible to look at the personages of the picture.
Every separate leaf of the climbing and clustering shrubbery was
painfully made out; and the wall was reality itself, with the
weather-stains, and the moss, and the crumbling lime between the bricks.
It is not well to be so perfect in the inanimate, unless the artist can
likewise make man and woman as lifelike, and to as great a depth, too, as
the Creator does.
Bennoch left town for some place in Yorkshire, and I for Liverpool.
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