t was the tormenting volume: the indestructible,
unrelenting phantom that would not be laid! Rossetti now perceived that
higher agencies were at work: it was _not meant_ that he should get rid
of the book: why should he contend against the inevitable? Reverently
and with both hands he took the besoiled parcel from the brown palm
of the labourer, placed half-a-crown there instead, and restored the
fearful book to its place on his shelf.

And now we come to incidents in Rossetti's career of which it is
necessary to treat as briefly as tenderly. Among the models who sat to
him was Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, a young lady of great personal
beauty, in whom he discovered a natural genius for painting and a
noticeable love of the higher poetic literature. He felt impelled
to give her lessons, and she became as much his pupil as model. Her
water-colour drawings done under his tuition gave proof of a wonderful
eye for colour, and displayed a marked tendency to style. The subjects,
too, were admirably composed and often exhibited unusual poetic feeling.
It was very natural that such a connection between persons of kindred
aspirations should lead to friendship and finally to love.

Rossetti and Miss Siddal were married in 1860. They visited France and
Belgium; and this journey, together with a similar one undertaken in the
company of Mr. Holman Hunt in 1849, and again another in 1863, when his
brother was his companion, and a short residence on the Continent when
a boy, may be said to constitute almost the whole sum of Rossetti's
travelling. Very soon the lady's health began to fail, and she became
the victim of neuralgia. To meet this dread enemy she resorted to
laudanum, taking it at first in small quantities, but eventually in
excess. Her spirits drooped, her art was laid aside, and much of the
cheerfulness of home was lost to her. There was a child, but it was
stillborn, and not long after this disaster, it was found that Mrs.
Rossetti had taken an overdose of her accustomed sleeping potion and
was lying dead in her bed. This was in 1862, and after two years only of
married life. The blow was a terrible one to Rossetti, who was the first
to discover what fate had reserved for him. It was some days before he
seemed fully to realise the loss that had befallen him, and then his
grief knew no bounds. The poems he had written, so far as they were
poems of love, were chiefly inspired by and addressed to her. At her
request he ha