y to mention it or any of
its cultured brotherhood is to provoke a smile. Nevertheless, there was
not a little high merit in the movement, which Ruskin was keen-eyed and
friendly enough to recognize, while much that is worthy afterwards came
out of it in the later work of the more notable of its members as well
as in that of their unenrolled associates and the admirers of the
Pre-Raphaelite method. What the movement owed to Ruskin is now frankly
conceded, in the lesson the brotherhood took to heart from his
counsellings,--to divest art of conventionality, and to work with
scrupulous fidelity and sincerity of purpose. Nor was contemporary art
alone the gainer by the movement; it also had its influence on poetry,
though this has been obscured--so far as any beneficial influence can be
traced at all--by the tendency manifested in some of the more amorous
poetic swains of the period, who professed to derive their inspiration
from the Brotherhood, to identify themselves with what has been styled
the "Fleshly School" of verse. Of the latter number, Swinburne, in his
early "Poems and Ballads," was perhaps the greatest sinner, though
atoned for in part by the lyrical art and ardor of his verse, and much
more by the higher qualities and scholarly characteristics of his later
dramatic Work. Nor is Dante Rossetti himself, in some of his poems, free
from the same taint, despite the fact of his interesting individuality
as the chief inspirer and laborer among the Brotherhood. Yet the
movement owed much to both his brush and his pen of other and nobler,
because reverential, work, as those will admit who know "The Blessed
Damozel," "Sister Helen," and his fine collection of sonnets, "The House
of Life," as well as his famous paintings, "The Girlhood of Mary
Virgin," and his Annunciation picture, "Ecce Ancilla Domini." Of the
product of other Pre-Raphaelites of note,--such as Ford Madox Brown,
Millais, Morris, Woolner the sculptor, Coventry Patmore, and Holman
Hunt,--much that is commendable as well as finely imaginative came from
their hands, and justified Ruskin in his gallant advocacy of the
movement, its founders, and their work.

By this time, of which we have been writing, Ruskin had reached the
early meridian of his powers, and, as we have hinted, had wrested from
the unwilling many a juster recognition of his amazing industry and
genius. To his fond and indulgent parents this was a great source of
pride and satisfaction, and th