Note 3 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY.

In this connection the following quotation from Mr. Ruskin's description of the origin of English pre-Raphaelitism may be found interesting. He is here speaking of Messrs. Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti: "Pupils in the same schools receiving precisely the same instruction, which for so long a time has paralysed every one of our painters; these boys agree in disliking to copy the antique statues set before them. They copy them as they are bid, and they copy them better than anybody else; they carry off prize after prize, and yet they hate their work. At last they are admitted to study from the life, they find the life very different from the antique, and they say so. Their teachers tell them the antique is the best, and they must not copy the life. They agree among themselves that they like the life and that copy it they will. They do copy it faithfully, and their masters forthwith declare them to be lost men. Their fellow-students hiss them whenever they enter the room. They cannot help it, they join hands and tacitly resist both the hissing and the instruction. Accidentally a few prints of the works of Giotto, a few casts from that of Ghiberti, fall into their hands, and they see in them something which they never saw before; something eternally and everlastingly true."