[Of Madox Brown.] ... He died quite young - for an artist our first fifty years pass in mighty mistakes - after that, we grow timid, and can scarce put the right foot in front of the left for self-conscious shame - then another twenty years of halting and we get new courage and know what to do, and what must be left undone - and then comes a gleam of hope, and a trumpet call and off we have to go. Did you ever hear the story of the ancient French lady, who was an old maid, and came to die, and was anxious about looking pretty when all was over, and asked her confessor how she ought to be laid out - and he said, "Ladies are mostly dressed in purple, but when a lady has never been married she id generally dressed in white." She thought this over for a time, and then said to him: "Father, I ought not to go there in false colours. Let a little band of purple be sewn on the hem of the white dress." ...