Symphony in White, No. 2, also known as The Little White Girl, a painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, shows a woman in three-quarter figure standing by a fireplace with a mirror over it, holding a fan in her hand, and wearing a white dress.

The model is Joanna Heffernan, the artist's mistress.

Though the painting is originally called The Little White Girl, Whistler will later start calling it Symphony in White, No. 2.

By referring to his work in such abstract terms, he intends to emphasize his "art for art's sake" philosophy.

In this painting, Heffernan wears a ring on her ring finger, even though the two are not married.

By this religious imagery, Whistler emphasizes the aesthetic philosophy behind his work.

Whistler had created the painting in the winter of 1864, and it is displayed at the Royal Academy in 1865 The original frame carries a poem written by Whistler's friend Algernon Charles Swinburne—titled Before the Mirror—written on sheets of golden paper.

The poem is inspired by the painting, and to Whistler this demonstrates that the visual arts need not be subservient to literature.

Though there are few clues to the meaning and symbolism of the painting, critics have found allusions to the work of Ingres, as well as oriental elements typical of the popular Japonisme.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born in the United States in 1834, the son of George Washington Whistler, a railway engineer.

In 1843, his father had relocated the family to Saint Petersburg, Russia, where James had received training in painting.

After a stay in England, he had returned to America to attend the US Military Academy at West Point in 1851.

In 1855, he had made his way back to Europe, determined to dedicate himself to painting.

At first settling in Paris, he had moved in 1859 to London, where he will spend most of the remainder of his life.

Her he has met Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who have a profound influence on Whistler.

It was also in London that Whistler meets Joanna Hiffernan, the model who becomes his lover.

Their relationship has been referred to as a "marriage without benefit of clergy."(Weintraub, Stanley (1974). Whistler: A biography. London: Collins p. 71)

By 1861, Whistler had already used her as a model for other paintings.

In Wapping, painted between 1860 and 1864, Hiffernan (according to Whistler) portrayed a prostitute.

The direct precursor of The Little White Girl is a painting created in the winter of 1861–62, initially called The White Girl and later renamed Symphony in White, No. 1.

Hiffernan supposedly has a strong influence over Whistler; his brother-in-law Francis Seymour Haden had refused a dinner invitation in the winter of 1863–64 due to her dominant presence in the household.

French symbolist poetry influences the Poems and Ballads of the English Decadent Algernon Charles Swinburne and the experimental poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins.

Swinburne, born at 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, on April 5, 1837, was the eldest of six children born to Captain (later Admiral) Charles Henry Swinburne and Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham.

He had grown up at East Dene in Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight and had attended Eton College 1849–53, where he first started writing poetry, and then Balliol College, Oxford 1856–60 with a brief hiatus when he was rusticated from the university in 1859 for having publicly supported the attempted assassination of Napoleon III by Felice Orsini, returning in May 1860, though he never receives a degree.

He had spent summer holidays at Capheaton Hall in Northumberland, the house of his grandfather, Sir John Swinburne, 6th Baronet (1762–1860) who had a famous library and was President of the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Swinburne had considered Northumberland to be his native county, an emotion memorably reflected in poems like the intensely patriotic 'Northumberland', 'Grace Darling' and others.

He enjoyed riding his pony across the moors (he was a daring horseman) 'through honeyed leagues of the northland border'.

He never called it the Scottish border.

In the years 1857–60, Swinburne had become one of Lady Pauline Trevelyan's intellectual circle at Wallington Hall and after his grandfather's death in 1860, would stay with William Bell Scott in Newcastle.

In December 1862, Swinburne had accompanied Scott and his guests, probably including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, on a trip to Tynemouth.

Scott writes in his memoirs that as they walked by the sea, Swinburne had declaimed the as yet unpublished 'Hymn to Proserpine' and 'Laus Veneris' in his lilting intonation, while the waves 'were running the whole length of the long level sands towards Cullercoats and sounding like far-off acclamations'.

At Oxford, Swinburne had met several Pre-Raphaelites, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

He had also met William Morris.

After leaving college, he lived in London and started an active writing career, where Rossetti had been delighted with his 'little Northumbrian friend’.

Poems and Ballads causes a sensation when it is first published, especially the poems written in homage of Sappho of Lesbos such as "Anactoria" and "Sapphics": Moxon and Co. transfers its publication rights to John Camden Hotten.

Other poems in this volume such as "The Leper," "Laus Veneris," and "St Dorothy" evoke a Victorian fascination with the Middle Ages, and are explicitly medieval in style, tone and construction.

Also featured in this volume are "Hymn to Proserpine", "The Triumph of Time" and "Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)".

The young Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his most ascetic poem, The Habit of Perfection, on January 18, 1866.

On January 23, he includes poetry in the list of things to be given up for Lent.

In July, he decides to become a Catholic, and he travels to Birmingham in September to consult the leader of the Oxford converts, John Henry Newman, who receives him into the Church on October 21, 1866.

St Pancras, a railway station terminus celebrated for its Victorian architecture by William Henry Barlow, stands on Euston Road in St Pancras, London Borough of Camden, between the British Library, King's Cross station and the Regent's Canal.

The materials used are wrought-iron framework of lattice design, with glass covering the middle half and timber (inside)/slate (outside) covering the outer quarters.

The two end screens are glazed in a vertical rectangular grid pattern with decorative timber cladding around the edge and wrought iron finials around the outer edge.

It is 679 feet (207 meters) long, 236 feet (72 meters) wide, and 98 feet (30 meters) high at the apex above the tracks.

It is opened in 1868 by the Midland Railway as the southern terminus of its main line, which connects London with the East Midlands and Yorkshire.

At this time, the arched train shed is the largest single-span roof in the world.

Algernon Charles Swinburne is outstanding for prosodic innovations and noteworthy as the symbol of mid-Victorian poetic revolt.

The red-haired Swinburne is pagan in his sympathies and passionately anti-theist.

Swinburne's health is being undermined during this era by alcoholism and by the excesses resulting from his abnormal temperament and masochistic tendencies; he experiences periodic fits of intense nervous excitement, from which, however, his remarkable powers of recuperation long enable him to recover quickly.

He had collapsed completely in 1879 and had been rescued and restored to health by his friend Theodore Watts-Dunton, who has maintained a strict regimen and encouraged Swinburne to devote himself to writing.

However, apart from the long poem Tristram of Lyonesse (1882) and the verse tragedy Marino Faliero (1885), his most important poetry belongs to the first half of his life.