CRANE. THE CHARIOTS OF THE FLEETING HOURS.
Swinburne's first ardent and sensuous volume of lyrics contains a poem, _The Garden of Proserpine_: it tells how a man weary of all things human and divine, and no longer able to support the intoxicating fragrance of the roses of Aphrodite, draws near with wavering steps to the throne where calm Proserpine sits silent, crowned with cold white flowers. And in the same way Rossetti's flaming and quivering passion and his volcanic desire end in Burne-Jones with sad resignation.
Whilst Christianity and Hellenism mingle in the figures of Burne-Jones, a division of labour is noticeable amongst the following artists: some addressed themselves exclusively to the treatment of ancient subjects, others to ecclesiastical romantic painting in the style of the Quattrocento, and others again recognised their chief vocation in initiating a reformation in kindred provinces of industrial art.
_R. Spencer Stanhope_, who was at Oxford, like Burne-Jones, and, indeed, received his first artistic impulses while employed on the elaboration of Rossetti's mural pictures for the Union, worked even in later days chiefly in the field of decorative painting, and is, with Burne-Jones, the principal designer for the interior decoration of churches in England. His oil-paintings are few, and in their gracious Quattrocento build they are in outward appearance scarcely different from those of Burne-Jones. In a picture belonging to the Manchester Gallery there is a maiden seated amid a flowery meadow, while a small Cupid with red pinions draws near to her; the landscape has an air of peace and happiness. Another picture--probably inspired by Catullus' _Lament for Lesbia's Sparrow_--displays a girl sitting upon an old town wall with a little dead bird. "The Temptation of Eve" is like a brilliantly coloured mediæval miniature, painted with the greatest _finesse_. As in the woodcut in the Cologne Bible, Paradise is enclosed with a circular red wall. Eve is like a slim, twisted Gothic statue. Like Burne-Jones, Stanhope is always delicate and poetic, but he is less successful in setting upon old forms of art the stamp of his individuality, and thus giving them new life and a character of their own. In their severe, archæological character his pictures have little beyond the affectation of a style which has been arrived at through imitation.