THE PRE-RAPHAELITE ARTISTS 327

slight tendency to exaggerate reflected lights; and if Mr. Millais has ever been near a piece of good painted glass, he ought to have known that its tone is more dusky and sober than that of his Mariana’s window. But for the most part these pictures are rashly condemned because the only light which we are accustomed to see represented is that which falls on the artist’s model in his dim painting-room, not that of sunshine in the fields.

I do not think I can go much further in fault-finding. I had, indeed, something to urge respecting what I supposed to be the Romanizing tendencies of the painters; but I have received a letter assuring me that I was wrong in attributing to them anything of the kind; whereupon, all I can say is that, instead of the “pilgrimage” of Mr. Collins’ maiden over a plank and round a fish-pond, that old pilgrimage of Christiana and her children towards the place where they should “look the Fountain of Mercy in the face,”¹ would have been more to the purpose in these times. And so I wish them all heartily good speed, believing in sincerity that if they temper the courage and energy which they have shown in the adoption of their systems with patience and discretion in framing it, and if they do not suffer themselves to be driven by harsh or careless criticism into rejection of the ordinary means of obtaining influence over the minds of others, they may, as they gain experience, lay in our England the foundations of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for three hundred years.²

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

DENMARK HILL, May 26.

¹ [The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part ii.]

² [“I have great hope that they may become the foundation of a more earnest and able school of art than we have seen for centuries.”-Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 621).]

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