nd art was looked upon as his
future profession. Upon leaving school about 1843, he studied first at
an art academy near Bedford Square, and afterwards at the Eoyal Academy
Antique School, never, however, going to the Eoyal Academy Life School.
He appears to have been an assiduous student. In after life when his
habit of late rising had become a stock subject of banter among his
intimate friends, he would tell with unwonted pride how in earlier years
he used to rise at six A.M. once a week in order to attend a life-class
held before breakfast. On such occasions he was accustomed, he would
say, to purchase a buttered roll and cup of coffee at some stall at a
street corner, so as not to dislocate domestic arrangements by requiring
the servants to get up in the middle of the night. He left the Academy
about 1848 or 1849, and in the latter year exhibited his picture
entitled the _Girlhood of Mary Virgin_. This painting is an admirable
example of his early art, before the Gothicism of the early Italian
painters became his quest. Better known to the public than the picture
is the sonnet written upon it, containing the beautiful lines--

An angel-watered lily, that near God
Grows and is quiet.

While Rossetti was still under age he associated with J. E. Millais,
Holman Hunt, Thomas Woolner, James Collinson, F. G. Stephens, and his
brother, W. M. Rossetti, in the movement called pre-Raphaelite. At the
beginning of his career he recognised, in common with his associates,
that the contemporary classicism had run to seed, and that, beyond an
effort after perfection of _technique_, the art of the period was all
but devoid of purpose, of thought, imagination, or spirituality. At such
a moment it was matter for little surprise that ardent young intellects
should go back for inspiration to the Gothicism of Giotto and the early
painters. There, at least, lay feeling, aim, aspiration, such as did
not concern itself primarily with any question of whether a subject were
painted well or ill, if only it were first of all a subject at all--a
subject involving manipulative excellence, perhaps, but feeling and
invention certainly. This, then, stated briefly, was the meaning of
pre-Raphaelitism. The name (as shall hereafter appear) was subsequently
given to the movement more than half in jest. It has sometimes been
stated that Mr. Ruskin was an initiator, but this is not strictly the
case. The company of young painters and writer