Of the people with whom I made acquaintance in London at this visit, those who most interested me were Clough and Owen.  Of the artists I saw little, as they and myself had other things to do than to frequent one another’s studios; but by the Rossetti family I profited largely, as I had been more or less in intimate relations with William since he undertook the correspondence of “The Crayon” from England.  Of Dante, indeed, I saw little at that time, as he lived by himself; but with William my relations were constant and cordial, and he was for many years my most valued English friend.  Through his extreme honesty and liberality, and his extensive knowledge of and wide feeling for art, there was great community of appreciation between us, and our friendship lasted long beyond the direct interest I had in English art matters.

Of Christina I saw a good deal, for the hospitality of the Rossetti family was informal and cordial.  She was then in excellent health, and, though she was never what would be, by the generality of tastes, considered a beautiful woman, there was a noble serenity and dignity of expression in her face which was, as is often said of women of the higher type of character, “better than beauty,” and in which one saw the spiritual exaltation that, without the least trace of the devote, dominated in her and made her, before all other women of whom I know anything, the poetess of the divine life.  The faith in the divine flamed out in her with a mild radiance which had in it no earthly warmth.  She attracted me very strongly, but I should as soon have thought of falling in love with the Madonna del Gran Duca as with her.  Being myself in the regions of dogmatic faith, I was in a position to judge sympathetically her religion, and, though we differed in tenets as far as two sincere believers in Christianity could, I found in our discussions of the dogmas a broad and affectionate charity in her towards all differences from the ideal of credence she had formed for herself.  I do not remember ever meeting any one who held such exalted and unquestioning faith in the true spiritual life as was hers.  From my mother, who was in most respects the most purely spiritual woman I have ever known, Christina differed by this serenity, which in my mother was often disturbed by the doubts that had their seeds in the old and superstitious Calvinism mingled with the ground of her creed, and from which she never could liberate herself.

Christina believed in God, in heaven, in the eternal life, with an unfaltering constancy and fullness which left no questionings except, it might be, concerning her fulfillment of her religious obligations.  And while I thought her belief in certain dogmas, such as transubstantiation, and in the fasting and ritual of her High Church observances, to be too trivial for such a really exalted intellect, so near the perception of the essential truth, she held them with such a childlike and tranquil faith that I would sooner have