nation,
the phrase of English have taken such turns as will develop physical
possibilities as different from those of our language as ours are from
those of the seventeenth century) for any poets to get distinctly great
effects in the same way. It is proof enough of this that, except the
masters, no poet for many years now _has_ achieved a great effect by
this means, and that the most promising of the newer school, whether
they may or may not have found a substitute, are abandoning it.

Rossetti's younger, but very little younger, sister, Christina Georgina,
was born in 1830, sat to her brother early for the charming picture of
"The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and is said also to figure in his
illustration of the weeping queens in Tennyson's _Morte D' Arthur_. But
she lived an exceedingly quiet life, mainly occupied in attention to her
mother and in devotion; for she had been brought up, and all her life
remained, a member of the Church of England. Her religious feelings more
and more coloured her poetical work, which was produced at intervals
from 1861 till close upon her death in the winter of 1894-95. It was not
hastily written, and latterly formed mainly the embellishment of certain
prose books of religious reflection or excerpt. But it was always of an
exquisite quality. Its first expression in book form was _Goblin Market,
and other Poems_ (1861), which, as well as her next volume, _The
Prince's Progress_ (1866), was illustrated by her brother's pencil. A
rather considerable time then passed without anything of importance (a
book called _Sing-Song_ excepted), till in 1881 _A Pageant, and other
Poems_ was added. A collection of all these was issued nine years later,
but with this the gleanings from the devotional works above mentioned
(the chief of which were _Time Flies_ and _The Face of the Deep_) have
still to be united.

There are those who seriously maintain Miss Rossetti's claim to the
highest rank among English poetesses, urging that she excels Mrs.
Browning, her only possible competitor, in freedom from blemishes of
form and from the liability to fall into silliness and maudlin gush, at
least as much as she falls short of her in variety and in power of
shaping a poem of considerable bulk. But without attempting a too rigid
classification we may certainly say that Miss Rossetti has no superior
among Englishwomen who have had the gift of poetry. In the title-piece
of her first book the merely quaint side of Pr