ELITISM.[42]

I.

226. I was lately staying in a country house, in which, opposite each
other at the sides of the drawing-room window, were two pictures,
belonging to what in the nineteenth century must be called old times,
namely Rossetti's "Annunciation," and Millais' "Blind Girl"; while, at
the corner of the chimney-piece in the same room, there was a little
drawing of a Marriage-dance, by Edward Burne Jones. And in my bedroom,
at one side of my bed, there was a photograph of the tomb of Ilaria di
Caretto at Lucca, and on the other, an engraving, in long since
superannuated manner, from Raphael's "Transfiguration." Also over the
looking-glass in my bedroom, there was this large illuminated text,
fairly well written, but with more vermilion in it than was needful;
"Lord, teach us to pray."

And for many reasons I would fain endeavor to tell my Oxford pupils some
facts which seem to me worth memory about these six works of art; which,
if they will reflect upon, being, in the present state of my health, the
best I can do for them in the way of autumn lecturing, it will be kind
to me. And as I cannot speak what I would say, and believe my pupils are
more likely to read it if printed in the _Nineteenth Century_ than in a
separate pamphlet, I have asked, and obtained of the editor, space in
columns which ought, nevertheless, I think, usually to be occupied with
sterner subjects, as the Fates are now driving the nineteenth century on
its missionary path.

227. The first picture I named, Rossetti's "Annunciation," was, I
believe, among the earliest that drew some public attention to the
so-called "Pre-Raphaelite" school. The one opposite to it,--Millais'
"Blind Girl," is among those chiefly characteristic of that school in
its determined manner. And the third, though small and unimportant, is
no less characteristic, in its essential qualities, of the mind of the
greatest master whom that school has yet produced.

I believe most readers will start at the application of the term
"master," to any English painter. For the hope of the nineteenth century
is more and more distinctly every day, to teach all men how to live
without mastership either in art or morals (primarily, of course,
substituting for the words of Christ, "Ye say well, for so I am,"--the
probable emendation, "Ye say ill, for so I am not"); and to limit the
idea of magistracy altogether, no less than the functions of the
magistrate, to the suppression of d