At the time when Rossetti and his circle were foregathering chiefly at Rossetti's house, quiet Chelsea scarcely knew how daily were associations added which will always cluster round her name. Whistler's share in those associations is very large, and he has left in his paintings the memory of many a night, as he returned beside the river.

Was there ever a more romantic time than our own, or a people who took everything more matter-of-factly? The paintings of a period contain all its enthusiasms and illusions. We remember the eighteenth century-at least in England-by Reynolds' and Gainsborough's art, the seventeenth century by Van Dyck's; and when we remember the eighteenth century in France, it is to think of Watteau, who expressed what his world, drifting towards disaster, cared about-an illusion of a never-ending summer's day.