isturbance in the manufacturing
districts.

Nor would I myself use the word "Master" in any but the most qualified
sense, of any "modern painter"; scarcely even of Turner, and not at all,
except for convenience and as a matter of courtesy, of any workman of
the Pre-Raphaelite school, as yet. In such courtesy, only, let the
masterless reader permit it me.

228. I must endeavor first to give, as well as I can by description,
some general notion of the subjects and treatment of the three pictures.

Rossetti's "Annunciation" differs from every previous conception of the
scene known to me, in representing the angel as waking the Virgin from
sleep to give her his message. The Messenger himself also differs from
angels as they are commonly represented, in not depending, for
recognition of his supernatural character, on the insertion of bird's
wings at his shoulders. If we are to know him for an angel at all, it
must be by his face, which is that simply of youthful, but grave,
manhood. He is neither transparent in body, luminous in presence, nor
auriferous in apparel;--wears a plain, long, white robe,--casts a
natural and undiminished shadow,--and, although there are flames beneath
his feet, which upbear him, so that he does not touch the earth, these
are unseen by the Virgin.

She herself is an English, not a Jewish girl, of about sixteen or
seventeen, of such pale and thoughtful beauty as Rossetti could best
imagine for her; concerning which effort, and its degree of success, we
will inquire farther presently.

She has risen half up, not _started_ up, in being awakened; and is not
looking at the angel, but only thinking, it seems, with eyes cast down,
as if supposing herself in a strange dream. The morning light fills the
room, and shows at the foot of her little pallet-bed, her embroidery
work, left off the evening before,--an upright lily.

Upright, and very accurately upright, as also the edges of the piece of
cloth in its frame,--as also the gliding form of the angel,--as also, in
severe foreshortening, that of the Virgin herself. It has been studied,
so far as it has been studied at all, from a very thin model; and the
disturbed coverlid is thrown into confused angular folds, which admit no
suggestion whatever of ordinary girlish grace. So that, to any spectator
little inclined towards the praise of barren "uprightnesse," and
accustomed on the contrary to expect radiance in archangels, and grace
in Madonnas, the f