358 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

the direction of the mind and sight of the public to such real merit as they possess. If Sir Charles Eastlake, Mulready, Edwin and Charles Landseer, Cope, and Dyce would each of them simply state their own private opinion respecting their paintings, sign it, and publish it, I believe the act would be of more service to English art than anything the Academy has done since it was founded.¹ But as I cannot hope for this, I can only ask the public to give their pictures careful examination, and to look at them at once with the indulgence and the respect which I have endeavoured to show they deserve.

Yet let me not be misunderstood. I have adduced them only as examples of the kind of study which I would desire to see substituted for that of our modern schools, and of singular success in certain characters, finish of detail, and brilliancy of colour. What faculties, higher than imitative, may be in these men, I do not yet venture to say; but I do say, that if they exist, such faculties will manifest themselves in due time all the more forcibly because they have received training so severe.²

they have called themselves Pre-Raphaelite. If they adhere to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with the help of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new and noble school in England. If their sympathies with the early artists lead them into medićevalism or Romanism, they will of course come to nothing. But I believe there is no danger of this, at least for the strongest among them. There may be some weak ones, whom the Tractarian heresies may touch; but if so, they will drop off like decayed branches from a strong stem. I hope all things from the schools.

The second falsehood was, that the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well. This was asserted, and could have been asserted only by persons who had never looked at the pictures.

The third falsehood was, that they had no system of light and shade. To which it may be simply replied that their system of light and shade is exactly the same as the Sun’s; which is, I believe, likely to outlast that of the Renaissance, however brilliant.

¹ [It would appear, however, that the Royal Academicians were by no means favourably disposed to the new school. Mulready and Maclise were alone, it is said, in giving “The Carpenter’s Shop” favourable consideration, and an Academician, who was art critic in one of the literary journals, denounced it as “pictorial blasphemy” and “revolting”: see Life and Letters of Millais, i. 74-75.]

² [See Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. vi. ch. x. § 8 (written nearly ten years later), where Ruskin refers to this passage, and adds, “such work can only connect itself with

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