sance, and when the religious purpose of the artist was gone, his love of truth went also. That love of nature which found the thought and labour of a life-time far too short to obtain a full insight into her beauty, or to fathom the unknown depths of her teaching, vanished; and with it went all desire to spend and be spent, in depicting her to others, instead of it came contentment with mere beauty of effect, the continual repetition of blue skies and still water and green foliage, stripped of all distinctive features, a generalization from nature rather than a representation of her.

We need not stop to point out, in how many ways the great English painters of the present and last generation have gone back to the earlier and truer principle, and how entirely their popularity has sprung from the truth with which they have rendered natural objects. Wilkie in the one, and Landseer in the other period, sufficiently evidence this. But the important point to be noticed is, that they have done this, in spite of their education, and in a great measure contrary to their own professions. They have rejected the spirit of Renaissance art, but adhered slavishly to the letter of Renaissance teaching. Their theory and their practice have been contradictory; and the result of this has been the rise of a school which, while in common with all great modern painters it adopts the principles of pre-renaissance art, and imparts to its represen tations of nature a degree of truth never, except in a single in. stance, reached before, does not consider itself bound to proclaim adherence to rules which it does not follow, and in the departure from which it recognises the only possibility of greatness. What their progress has been since they took up their new position our readers know. They began by simply copying nature in her most ordinary aspects, despising nothing, neglecting nothing. Every leaf of their foliage, every petal of their flowers was painted with all the care, and thought, and exactness of which they were capable. Their pictures were met with many opposing objections; first, their truth was denied, and here every spectator thought himself a competent critic, able to pronounce whether what he saw before him on the canvass was a faithful transcript of what he might see around him in the meadow or the garden. There can be no greater mistake. Nothing so completely escapes men's observation as ordinary natural objects, not merely effects, which they may see but seldom, perhaps only once, but objects, which they may see every day. Which of us can delineate with certainty a leaf or flower even of those few plants which constantly meet our eye? Men had never before been brought so directly face to face with nature, as when they gazed on a Pre-Raphaelite picture, and they started back amazed, preferring to deny the truth of the representation rather than admit the inaccuracy of their own perceptions. But from this humble patient beginning how great has been the advance to such pictures as those of Mr. Hunt in the exhibition of

last year. The real strength of the Pre-Raphaelite movement was first seen in the "Light of the World" and the "Awakened Conscience." In both of these there is the same careful drawing of detail; every thorn of the bramble is given with the same accuracy as of old, but the detail has fallen back into a subordinate place, and become only an accessory to the central thought.

The "Light of the World" could hardly be seen to advantage on the walls of an exhibition room unless indeed the majority of the pictures hung on them were greatly changed; but it requires only to be viewed by itself, or still better, as we have seen it, in the fitting company of such pictures as "Convent Thoughts," where neither eye, nor ear, nor mind are distracted by a throng of incongruous works, and still more incongruous spectators, to be recognised as one of the very noblest offsprings of religious art, in any age. And praise the same in kind ought, we think, to be accorded to the "Awakened Conscience." It may create some surprise, perhaps, that we should thus place the two pictures side by side. And we can easily imagine that in an age which considers morality to be violated rather by sin being known and confessed, than by its being cherished and practised, such a picture may be stigmatised as "improper." We own to thinking differently. We know no picture in which sin is painted so thoroughly in its true colours; none in which its refinement and deformity, its polished surface and cankered heart, are placed so unflinchingly side by side. For Mr. Hunt has not fallen into the common error of painting vice as necessarily coarse, thereby encouraging by implication the false and mischievous notion that its evil resides wholly in its grossness. He has given the truer version, and shown its compatibility with graceful exterior and cultivated intellect. But the lesson conveyed is all the more striking. The unconscious heartlessness of the lover's face; the evidence it gives of the light in which he views his victim, as holding a plaything's place, and destined to share a plaything's fate; the hatred of herself and of him painted on the girl's features; the despair that needs but a word or touch to quicken it into revenge; all this, and far more besides, go to make up a picture, to which for the sternness of its moral teaching we hardly know an equal.

Under such auspices has the Pre-Raphaelite Movement sprung up and prospered. Contempt, opposition, foreboding, has alike been lost upon it. Strong in the possession of a great idea, and of the purpose needful to carry it out, it has struggled and triumphed. In the words of Mr. Ruskin, "The 'magna est veritas' was never more sure of its accomplishment than by these men. Their adversaries have no chance with them. They will gradually unite their influence with whatever is true or powerful in the reactionary art of other countries; and in their works such a school will be founded as shall justify the third age of the world's

civilisation, and render it as great in creation as it has been in discovery."

We have but little space left for Mr. Young's pamphlet; but it is a fair instance of a species of criticism which has been used with great frequency against Mr. Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, and therefore is considered, as we must suppose, a serviceable weapon. As such it deserves the few words for which we have yet room.

Mr. Young commences by remarking that he will not stop to "ask whether Gerald Douw was well employed in devoting a fortnight's labour to a broomstick." The point of this inquiry he evidently considers to rest in the "fortnight's labour." We should have thought that the question would rather be, was Gerald Douw "well employed" in painting a broomstick at all. If he was, and supposing less labour would not paint it well, that he was "well employed" in devoting even that time to his work. But Mr. Young thinks differently. Nature must be imitated, he grants, but the less time spent on it the better. He seems to have forgotten the common notion (and we think the correct one), that if a thing be done at all, it may as well be done thoroughly. The next point we have to notice (passing over several equally perhaps deserving it), is a criticism on Mr. Ruskin's assertion, that when there are things in the foreground of Salvator, of which I cannot pronounce whether they be granite, or slate, or tufa, I affirm there is in them . . . . simple monstrosity." To this Mr. Young makes answer: "You do generalise rocks and mountains when you call them rocks and mountains." (There appears to be some confusion here between an operation of the mind and an operation of the brush.) "I read, 'Thy truth is like the great mountains.' Am I to suspend my responsive feelings till I can pronounce whether they be granite, slate, or tufa?" We wish to put a parallel case to Mr. Young. We read, "All Thy works praise Thee." Ought a painter, in depicting the works of GOD, to "generalise" them as they are generalised here by being called works, and so put upon his canvass an abstraction from a man, a cactus, and a giraffe? We are not confident as to Mr. Young's answer; we are quite so as to the result of one trial of his theory.

There are many things in the Lecture of an equally remarkable character, and should our readers fall in with it, they may be sure of some amusement. We cannot recommend them to buy it, lest Mr. Young should be induced by the sale of a copy of one Lecture, to venture on the publication of another.

We are conscious of having done anything but full justice to the Pre-Raphaelites in these remarks. But if any one who has not yet considered the merits of the question should desire to do so, he will find all he needs in Mr. Ruskin's fourth Lecture and Pamphlet, and still more in the careful study of the works of the painters themselves.

6

WOMEN AND THEIR WORK.

IT is long since any event has occurred in the annals of our country, likely to be productive of such deep and lasting results as that war which is now the engrossing subject with us all. Politically, religiously, socially, it is making itself felt everywhere; and whilst at many a desolate hearth, and in many a newly saddened home, it can appear only as a tremendous evil, there are at the same time other aspects of a deeply consolatory nature under which it may and ought to be viewed. Of these, we design to speak at present only of its effect upon our social system, which may very fairly be likened to that produced by the storm which clears the air, and drives away the delusive mists from the face of some bare and rugged landscape.

One might fill many pages with an enumeration of the various truths which this great convulsion has cast up, as it were, on the surface of society. Much that is good and beautiful has certainly been brought to light; but much has also been exposed, of weak prejudice, rotten systems, and unsound theories; and it is to one of this latter class that we propose to confine ourselves now.

It may well be questioned whether any prejudice has ever existed among us more detrimental to the public good, than that which has so long prohibited the women of England from forming themselves into communities, zealous of good works, as in other countries they are permitted to do, to their own great happiness and the benefit of their fellow-creatures. It is the more to be regretted that this prejudice should have taken root so strongly, in that very country which, above all others, requires to find some means for usefully employing the time and energies of its masses of single women. It is a well known fact that this class is more numerous in England than in any other part of the world; and certainly it is to our credit that it should be so, considering what are the really disgraceful measures taken on the Continent, for the disposal of marriageable women to the highest bidder.

Happily in England that system is yet unknown which permits a bargain to be struck between the parents of the future couple without any reference to the parties themselves; and therefore in spite of many hateful speculations to which persons are driven by the very prejudice of which we are speaking, it almost invariably happens that the larger proportion of the daughters in a family remain unmarried.

Such being the case, it may really be considered a sort of national phenomenon, that the universally received opinion on this subject should declare a woman's only calling to be that of a wife

and mother; and, failing this, consign her to the hopelessness of a "vocation manquée." Nor is it only a matter of opinion. Single women have been, until very lately, absolutely compelled to accept this dismal position, in all its dreary vacuity, and to lead lives as helplessly useless, as light reading and worsted work can make them. Or where occasionally some energetic woman has burst the trammels of social convenances, and tried in some way to make her existence available to others, it has generally been found that alone and unsupported she can do little or nothing.

Some years since a certain misgiving began to spread in various quarters as to the wisdom and necessity of a system, which thus branded with ridicule, and cursed with uselessness that state, first sanctified by her who was blessed among women, and honoured as the highest and purest in all the earlier ages of the Church. Soon this misgiving, growing and strengthening, took a tangible form in the shape of a few scattered sisterhoods, that feebly struggled into life in various parts of the kingdom. This was at once the signal for the violent outbreaking of all the prejudices and fanatic animosity against religious communities, which are, as we have said, so rife in England. Every one knows what an unrelenting persecution has been carried on against those few poor institutions, which have doubtless only maintained their existence under it, because "might" cannot always triumph over "right."

At the same time we are not ashamed to admit that the inexperience, and often injudiciousness, of those who were the first pioneers in this neglected course, may very largely have laid them open to the opposition and censure they have met with; and this is precisely one of the subjects into which we propose to inquire in these pages.

Meantime the fearful war breaks out, which haply some day, appalling as it now seems, we may be enabled to recognize as being, in truth, a messenger from the GOD of Battles, sent to trouble the waters for the healing of nations; and with the news of the victory of the Alma, there come also the tidings that three thousand wounded men lie helpless and unassisted in the hospital at Scutari, with the wounds festering in their flesh for want of nurses to attend to them. The whole country is roused; help must be found and that without delay; newspapers are inundated with letters and suggestions, and the bitter, longstanding prejudice of well-nigh an entire people is blown to the winds before the irresistible power of a practical necessity. To the despised sisterhoods the hopes and attention of the whole nation are turned; and from their ranks, so often declared to be composed only of dreaming enthusiasts and Jesuit agents, the nurses come forth who are to carry the help and consolation of England to the suffering thousands, who have spent their blood in her defence. With the thanks and blessings of the whole country they depart, and now