school, he found that the one
mistake in the "Mariana" was the only error in perspective in the whole
series of pictures; which could not be said of any twelve works,
containing architecture, by popular artists in the exhibition; and that,
as studies both of drapery and of every other minor detail, there had
been nothing in art so earnest or so complete as these pictures since
the days of Albert Duerer.

He went home, and wrote his verdict in a letter to _The Times_ (May 9,
1851). Next day he asked the price of Hunt's "Two Gentlemen of Verona,"
and Millais' "Return of the Dove." On the 13th his letter appeared in
_The Times_, and on the 26th he wrote again, pointing out beauties, and
indications of power in conception, and observation of Nature, and
handling, where at first he, like the rest of the public, had been
repelled by the wilful ugliness of the faces. Meanwhile the
Pre-Raphaelites wrote to tell him that they were neither Papists nor
Puseyites. The day after his second letter was published he received an
ill-spelt missive, anonymously abusing them. This was the sort of thing
to interest his love of poetical justice. He made the acquaintance of
several of the Brethren. "Charley" Collins, as his friends
affectionately called him, was the son of a respected R.A., and the
brother of Wilkie Collins; himself afterwards the author of a delightful
book of travel in France, "A Cruise upon Wheels." Millais turned out to
be the most gifted, charming and handsome of young artists. Holman Hunt
was already a Ruskin-reader, and a seeker after truth, serious and
earnest in his religious nature as in his painting.

The Pre-Raphaelites were not, originally, Ruskin's pupils, nor was their
movement, directly, of his creation. But it was the outcome of a general
tendency which he, more than any man, had helped to set in motion; and
it was the fulfilment, though in a way he had not expected, of his
wishes.

His attraction to Pre-Raphaelitism was none the less real because it was
sudden, and brought about partly by personal influence. And in
re-arranging his art-theory to take them in, he had before his mind
rather what he hoped they would become than what they were. For a time,
his influence over them was great; their first three years were their
own; their next three years were practically his; and some of them, the
weaker brethren, leaned upon him until they lost the command of their
own powers. No artist can afford to use anoth