s that threaten its
safety, nor struggles greater than will strengthen it. The appreciation
and frank acceptance it has met on its first appearance here, the number
of earnest and intelligent adherents it has already found, are more
than its warmest friends hoped for so soon. But in England, while its
appreciating admirers will remain adherents to its principles, it will
pass out of existence as an independent form of Art, and the elements
of good in it will mingle with the Art of the nation, as a leaven
of nonconformity and radicalism, breeding agitations enough to keep
stagnation away and to secure a steady and irresistible progress. Its
truest devotees will remain in principle what they are, losing gradually
the external characteristics of the school as it is now known,--while
the great mass of its disciples, unthinking, impulsive, will sink back
into the ranks of the old school, carrying with them the strength they
have acquired by the severe training of the system, so that the whole of
English Art will be the better for Pre-Raphaelitism. But with Ruskin's
influence ceases the Commonwealth of Art; for Ruskin governs, not
represents, English feeling,--governs with a tyranny as absolute, an
authority as unquestioned, as did Oliver Cromwell.

Of the men now enlisted in the reform, few are of very great value
individually. Millais will probably be the first important recusant.
He is a man of quick growth, and his day of power is already past; the
reaction will find in him an ally of name, but he has no real greatness.
William Holman Hunt and Dante Rosetti are great imaginative artists, and
will leave their impress on the age. Ford Madox Brown, as a rational,
earnest painter, holds a noble and manly position. But then we have done
with great names. Much seed has sprung up on stony ground; but, having
little soil, when the sun shines, it will die. The slow growth is the
sure one.

* * * * *

LITERARY NOTICES.

_History of the Republic of the United States of America, as traced in
the Writings of Alexander Hamilton and his Contemporaries_. By John C.
HAMILTON Vol. I. New York: D. Appleton & Co., Broadway. 1857.

Comic Histories have never been to our taste. The late Mr. Gilbert a
Beckett, we always thought, might have employed his _vis comica_, or
force of fun, better than in linking ludicrous images and incongruous
associations with the heroes of ancient and modern times. The depart