er man's eyes; still less,
another man's brain and heart. Ruskin, great as an exponent, was in no
sense a master of artists; and if he cheered on the men, who, he
believed, were the best of the time, it did not follow that he should be
saddled with the responsibility of directing them.

The famous pamphlet on "Pre-Raphaelitism" of August, 1851, showed that
the same motives of Sincerity impelled both the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren
and Turner and, in a degree, men so different as Prout, old Hunt, and
Lewis. All these were opposed to the Academical School who worked by
rule of thumb; and they differed among one another only in differences
of physical power and moral aim. Which was all perfectly true, and much
truer than the cheap criticism which could not see beyond superficial
differences, or the fossil theories of the old school. But
Pre-Raphaelitism was an unstable compound, liable to explode upon the
experimenter, and its component parts to return to their old antithesis
of crude naturalism on the one hand, and affectation of piety or poetry
or antiquarianism, on the other. And _that_ their new champion did not
then foresee. All he knew was that, just when he was sadly leaving the
scene, Turner gone and night coming on, new lights arose. It was really
far more noteworthy that Millais and Rossetti and Hunt were _men of
genius_, than that the "principles" they tried to illustrate were sound,
and that Ruskin divined their power, and generously applauded them.

Immediately after finishing the pamphlet on "Pre-Raphaelitism," he left
for the Continent with his wife and friends, the Rev. and Mrs. Daniel
Moore; spent a fortnight in his beloved Savoy, with the Pritchards; and
then crossed the Alps with Charles Newton. On the 1st of September he
was at Venice, for a final spell of labour on the palaces and churches.
After spending a week with Rawdon Brown he settled at Casa Wetzler,
Campo Sta. Maria Zobenigo, and during the autumn and winter not only
worked extremely hard at his architecture, but went with his wife into
Austrian and Italian society and saw many distinguished visitors. One of
them, whom he lectured on the shortcomings of the Renaissance, was Dean
Milman. "I am amused at your mode of ciceronizing the Dean of St.
Paul's," wrote his father, who kept up the usual close correspondence,
and made himself useful in looking up books of reference and consulting
authorities like Mr. James Fergusson--for these chapters of easy