It was with relief rather than with sorrow that the
public learned on Thursday evening that Sir John Millais's long and most painful struggle with a fatal disease had closed at last. Within a few months the Royal Academy has lost two of its Presidents, and those the most distinguished in its ranks. Sir John Millais, who was born in 1829, and had com- pleted his sixty-seventh year, was probably fuller of over-flow. ing natural genius for art than any artist whom England has produced in the present century. He was a very great colourist, and charged with so boundless a sense of power that, lake other men so endowed, he was often tempted to trust to his singular opulence of resource when he might have reached a still higher level of achievement if he had always been as pains- taking as he was powerful. Many of his early pictures and por- traits remain in the memory of the general public as few other pictures of our century do. Who of those who saw his picture of " My First Sermon," for instance,—the little girl in all the glory of childish beauty, and filled with a new sense of responsibility to show that she shared some of the gravity of her seniors,—will ever forget the impression it made upon him, or the passion and splendour of the Huguenots' leave- taking, or the supreme beauty of the " Rescue" effected by a fireman in the early dawn P His portraits, too, always conveyed a distinct individual impress of character, and always gave that sense of the ease and force of the painter which adds so greatly to the enjoyment of his work. It seems strange that such an abounding glory of natural gift should have set amid scenes of weary and protracted gloom.
