of its own.

245. I said that in this second paper I would try to give some brief
history of the rise, and the issue, of that Pre-Raphaelite school: but,
as I look over two of the essays[47] that were printed with mine in that
last number of the _Nineteenth Century_--the first--in laud of the
Science which accepts for practical spirits, inside of men, only Avarice
and Indolence; and the other,--in laud of the Science which "rejects the
Worker" outside of Men, I am less and less confident in offering to the
readers of the _Nineteenth Century_ any History relating to such
despised things as unavaricious industry,--or incorporeal vision. I will
be as brief as I can.

246. The central branch of the school, represented by the central
picture above described:--"The Blind Girl"--was essentially and vitally
an uneducated one. It was headed, in literary power, by Wordsworth; but
the first pure example of its mind and manner of Art, as opposed to the
erudite and _artificial_ schools, will be found, so far as I know, in
Moliere's song: _j'aime mieux ma mie_.

Its mental power consisted in discerning what was lovely in present
nature, and in pure moral emotion concerning it.

Its physical power, in an intense veracity of direct realization to the
eye.

So far as Mr. Millais saw what was beautiful in vagrants, or commons, or
crows, or donkeys, or the straw under children's feet in the Ark (Noah's
or anybody else's does not matter),--in the Huguenot and his mistress,
or the ivy behind them,--in the face of Ophelia, or in the flowers
floating over it as it sank;--much more, so far as he saw what
instantly comprehensible nobleness of passion might be in the binding
of a handkerchief,--in the utterance of two words, "Trust me" or the
like: he prevailed, and rightly prevailed, over all prejudice and
opposition; to that extent he will in what he has done, or may yet do,
take, as a standard-bearer, an honorable place among the reformers of
our day.

So far as he could not see what was beautiful, but what was essentially
and forever common (in that God had not cleansed it), and so far as he
did not see truly what he thought he saw; (as for instance, in this
picture, under immediate consideration, when he paints the spark of
light in a crow's eye a hundred yards off, as if he were only painting a
miniature of a crow close by,)--he failed of his purpose and hope; but
how far I have neither the power nor the disposition to consider.