is a scene from the interior of London life; a denunciation of the vice
of which the world is so careless; a sad, stern picture of the bitterness
of sin. Millais is less in earnest, and his pictures, with many great
technical merits, with portions of very exquisite painting, have rarely
possessed any great worth as works of imagination. One of the tenderest
of them all is the Huguenots, the girl and her lover parting, which is
now becoming generally known through the engraving that has recently been
published. The Autumn Leaves, which is exhibited at Manchester, is one of
his least satisfactory pictures.

But all these men are young, and what they have already accomplished is
but as the promise of greater things to come. It is impossible, however,
to look forward for these greater things, without a feeling of doubt and
uncertainty as to their being produced. The times in which we are living
are not fitted to develope and confirm the qualities on which the best
results of Art depend. Ours is neither an age of composure nor of faith. It
urges speedy results; it desires effective, rather than simple, truthful
work. But the Pre-Raphaelites are exposed to especial dangers; just now to
the dangers that come from success. And these are of two kinds; first, the
undermining of that humility which is the secret of mastery; and secondly,
the tendency to the development of peculiarities and mannerisms, to the
exaggeration of special features that have attracted attention in their
work, and which have a factitious value set upon them by the public, as
they are taken to be the signs and passwords of initiation into the new
school. But, lying deeper than these, there is a danger to Pre-Raphaelitism
from the tendency to insist on too literal an application of its own
principles. The best principles will not include all cases. The workings
and ways of Nature are infinite, and the principles of Art are finite
deductions from these infinite examples. As yet these deductions have been
but imperfectly made. The most exact and truthful representation of Nature