THE PRE-RAPHAELITE ARTISTS 335

embossed books, vain and useless-they also new-marked with no happy wearing of beloved leaves; the torn and dying bird upon the floor; the gilded tapestry, with the fowls of the air feeding on the ripened corn; the picture above the fireplace, with its single drooping figure-the woman taken in adultery; nay, the very hem of the poor girl’s dress, at which the painter has laboured so closely, thread by thread, has story in it, if we think how soon its pure whiteness may be soiled with dust and rain, her out-cast feet failing in the street; and the fair garden flowers, seen in that reflected sunshine of the mirror,-these also have their language-

“Hope not to find delight in us, they say,

For we are spotless, Jessy-we are pure.”²

I surely need not go on. Examine the whole range of the walls of the Academy,-nay, examine those of all our public and private galleries,-and while pictures will be met with by the thousand which literally tempt to evil, by the thousand which are directed to the meanest trivialities of incident or emotion, by the thousand to the delicate fancies of inactive religion, there will not be found one powerful as this to meet full in the front the moral evil of the age in which it is painted; to waken into mercy the cruel thoughtlessness of youth, and subdue the severities of judgment into the sanctity of compassion.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

THE AUTHOR OF “MODERN PAINTERS.”

DENMARK HILL.

¹ [Compare the “Notes on the Louvre,” below, p. 473.]

² [Shenstone: Elegy xxvi. The subject of the poem is that of the picture described here. The girl speaks,-

“If through the garden’s flowery tribes I stray,

Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure,

Hope not,” etc.

Ruskin quotes some of the lines in a different connexion in Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xii. § 15 (“Of the Pathetic Fallacy”).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]