d put up copies of the same in our churches, and almost
anathematise as heathens those who prefer better drawing? This period is
the very winter of art, and the next is the spring, all life and
freshness and beauty. We cannot but here remember the young painters in
England who have borrowed a name, if not a principle, from the times
before RAPHAEL. Already their works have become the great point of
attraction in the Royal Academy; already they have reaped the success
of enthusiastic praise, and the still rarer and more precious success of
rancorous abuse. What does our friend ORTOLAN say on this subject?

ORTOLAN has a lively sense of every sort of pleasure. He orders a dinner
better than another man, and enjoys it more; he is a good sportsman, and
well known as a first-rate wicket-keeper at LORD'S. But only his
intimate friends are aware how he appreciates literature and art, and
how solid his acquirements are in both. He is now quietly analysing the
method employed by TITIAN in painting flesh when he is accosted by your
Correspondent. "What do I think of Pre-Raphaelitism? I don't know what
it means. Where are you to find out? There was a pamphlet certainly with
that title which strongly recommended painting from Nature, but there is
nothing very new in that. All artists paint from Nature, and very sick
it makes one of the wonderful wigs, and satin, and armour, and
plate-glass and china, and fruit and flowers and shiny dogs and deer. I
don't speak of landscape painters, because the writer of that pamphlet
has already proved that the moderns in this line are very superior,
because better imitators than the old. One notion of his may perhaps
pretend to novelty, that a painter should 'select nothing and reject
nothing' in Nature. But I don't understand what he means by this. How
can you avoid selecting and rejecting? I suppose some things are
prettier than others, just as some women are prettier than others. He
can hardly want a man to shut his eyes to what gives him pleasure. If he
does he is wrong, and must know that he's wrong. If not, he must mean
that when you are set down to paint the subject you have selected, you
ought to paint it as it is. If that is all his discovery, what is the
use of making such a fuss about it? Of course you ought, and so every
industrious student does, to the best of his ability. But you must
distinguish between studies and pictures. The first are merely
exercises; the second are, or should