worshiped with her than have disturbed her tranquillity in it.  She gave me a demonstration of doctrinal charity which was to me a novelty, and showed me that tenets which are to me, and those trained like me, idle formalities were in reality the steps of a ladder by which she must climb to the realization of the abstract good.  Dogmas and observances apart, I felt that her religion was so much loftier than my own that, though it would have been impossible for me to profess acceptance of it, it was equally impossible to argue with her about it,—­that it was so woven into the fibre of her existence that to move it in the least would be impossible, or, if possible, only at the cost of mental and spiritual dislocation.  But, with all this, there was not in her a trace of the assumption of a religious superiority which I have so often found in the driest non-conformist, or the putting me apart with the creatures that perish and are doomed which I have oftener found in Catholic friends, with whom I have felt that they regarded me with a sort of pitiful friendship, as one certain to be damned, and so only worth a limited regard, lest love should be wasted.  In after years I saw her not infrequently, and when illness and grief had touched her, and I saw always the same serenity and the same wide personal charity.

Much of Christina’s character one could see in her mother, a noble and worshipful woman, in whom the domestic virtues mingled with the spiritual in a way that set off the singleness of life of Christina singularly, as if it were the same light in an earthen vessel.  Mrs. Rossetti was what one often hears spoken of as “a dear, good woman,” whose motherly life had absorbed her existence,—­one of the witnesses (martyrs) of the practical Christianity, who go, unseen and unknown, to build the universal church of humanity, and whom we reverence without naming them.  Of Maria, the elder sister of Christina, I saw less, but enough to know that the same ardent, beautiful religious spirit burned in her, mute.  In the years when I, later, saw most of the family, Maria lived in a sisterhood.  She had none of the genius or the personal charm of her sister, but possessed the same elevation and serene religious sentiment.

Of Clough I saw a good deal, though his occupation in a government office left him not much leisure; and it seemed to me that, of all public officials I ever knew, he was the most misplaced at an office desk.  Of fragile health and with the temperament of a poet, gentle as a woman can be, he often reminded me of Pegasus in harness.  I had a commission from Norton to paint a small full-length portrait of him, and had several sittings; but it did not get on to suit me, and his being compelled to go to Italy for his health before I had finished with it, for well or ill, put an end to it.  He left me in occupation of his house while they were away.  Of all the people of the poet’s temper I ever knew, Clough was the least inclined to talk of poetry, and but