67 
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI. 
VERY reader of Christina Rossetti’s poetry must realise 
how real was her love of nature, animate and inanimate ; 
and Mr. Mackenzie Bell’s recently published memoir 
prompts me to make some notes illustrative of this 
vein in her character. 
Christina Rossetti lived a life quite apart from the noisy 
whirl of society, and troubled herself but little about the many 
questions of the day in which some women concern themselves. 
The only movement we hear of her being associated with was 
that against vivisection. In the biography just referred to we 
find the following paragraph : — “ Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton 
has well said about Christina that she spoke of wild animals 
sometimes as though they were human beings, and sometimes 
as though they were fairies. Indeed there is no doubt that her 
attitude towards animals had something very remarkable in it. 
She had a predilection for all animals, even mice not being 
thought of with disfavour,” and in an article in Good Words 
for December, 1896, we find the following reminiscences from 
the pen of Mrs. Frend. “ Most of all I used to wonder at and 
admire the way in which she would take up, and hold in the 
hollow of her hand, cold little frogs and clammy toads, or furry 
many-legged caterpillars, with a fearless love that we country 
children could never emulate. Even to the individual whisk of 
one squirrel’s tail from another’s, or the furtive scuttle of a rabbit 
across a field or common, nothing escaped her nature-loving ken; 
yet her excursions into the country were as angels’ visits, ‘ few 
and far between : ’ but when there, how much she noted of flower 
and tree, beast and bird ” ! 
To some readers the following extract from “ Eve ” may be 
new ; Eve is weeping over Abel, slain by his brother, and thus 
the lowlier creatures are supposed to sympathise with her : — 
“ Greatest and least 
Each piteous beast 
To hear her voice 
Forgot his joys 
And set aside his feast. 
“ The mouse paused in his walk 
And dropped his wheaten stalk ; 
Grave cattle wagged their heads 
In rumination ; 
The eagle gave a cry 
From his cloud station ; 
Larks on thyme beds 
Forbore to mount or sing ; 
Bees drooped upon the wing ; 
The raven perched on high 
Forgot his ration ; 
The conies in their rock, 
A feeble nation, 
Quaked sympathetical ; • 
