247. The school represented by Mr. Rossetti's picture and adopted for
his own by Mr. Holman Hunt, professed, necessarily, to be a learned one;
and to represent things which had happened long ago, in a manner
credible to any moderns who were interested in them. The value to us of
such a school necessarily depends on the things it chooses to represent,
out of the infinite history of mankind. For instance, David, of the
first Republican Academe, was a true master of this school; and,
painting the Horatii receiving their swords, foretold the triumph of
that Republican Power. Gerome, of the latest Republican Academe, paints
the dying Polichinelle, and the _morituri_ gladiators: foretelling, in
like manner, the shame and virtual ruin of modern Republicanism. What
our own painters have done for us in this kind has been too unworthy of
their real powers, for Mr. Rossetti threw more than half his strength
into literature, and, in that precise measure, left himself unequal to
his appointed task in painting; while Mr. Hunt, not knowing the
necessity of masters any more than the rest of our painters, and
attaching too great importance to the externals of the life of Christ,
separated himself for long years from all discipline by the recognized
laws of his art; and fell into errors which wofully shortened his hand
and discredited his cause--into which again I hold it no part of my duty
to enter. But such works as either of these painters have done, without
antagonism or ostentation, and in their own true instincts; as all
Rossetti's drawing from the life of Christ, more especially that of the
Madonna gathering the bitter herbs for the Passover when He was twelve
years old; and that of the Magdalen leaving her companions to come to
Him; these, together with all the mythic scenes which he painted from
the _Vita Nuova_ and _Paradiso_ of Dante, are of quite imperishable
power and value: as also many of the poems to which he gave up part of
his painter's strength. Of Holman Hunt's "Light of the World," and
"Awakening Conscience," I have publicly spoken and written, now for many
years, as standard in their kind: the study of sunset on the Egean,
lately placed by me in the schools of Oxford, is not less authoritative
in landscape, so far as its aim extends.

248. But the School represented by the third painting, "The Bridal," is
that into which the greatest masters of _all_ ages are gathered, and in
which they are walled round as in Elysian