with most deliberate purpose, to produce an emblematical design. The chief of these pictures is, I think, "The Light of the World," and in this is seen intense religious fervor, mediæval feeling, or the desire to have and to express such feeling, and the evident reference of the artistic conception to Italian work of the fifteenth century. V THERE was, moreover, the desire for realistic drawing of the figure, for natural pose, natural gesture-natural action, in short, in all figure subjects. This desire was modified by the early Italian influence already mentioned, and also by the influence of mediævalism, as explained above; but it remains evident in all Pre-Raphaelite work. Now it is curious to think that this desire for realistic verity in drawing would have been gratified by those French painters of the day whom the Pre-Raphaelites despised without knowing them. There is a difference between the realism of the Paris-taught Frenchman, with all his examples classical in their character, with all his traditions bound up with Raphael and the followers of Raphael, and the Pre-Raphaelite idea of it founded upon the more perfect of the Gothic sculptures in cathedral porches, together with some hints taken from paintings in manuscripts. And yet it would seem clear that the same artist who turned from Géricault, offended by the violence and misery seen in "Le Radeau de la Méduse" in the Louvre, would have found in that master and in Couture, and even in Delaroche-even in the contemned Vernet-as much reality of gesture and truth of pose as pictorial art will allow. This search for natural-seeming attitudes and for the appearance of movement in a picture has a larger significance than at first appears. The scores of Pre-Raphaelite pictures given in photographic plates in P. H. Bate's book and Harry Quilter's book named in the footnote above, in W. M. Rossetti's "Ruskin and Rossetti" papers brought together in 1899, in McColl's "Nineteenth Century Art," and in Mr. Hunt's two volumes.all agree in pointing to a love and longing for intensity, for strenuous emphasis, even if it should lead to violence. In the Tennyson of 1859 (the most accessible collection of PreRaphaelite work, because, though the original is rare, there is a good reissue) Millais' illus And in trations to "The Miller's Daughter," the designs for "The Talking Oak," and, still better, his "Mariana" are even more clumsily managed than is necessary for truth. In the effort to avoid affectation grace of line has been rejected. What is good in the striving for verity is, then, the carefully imagined action. "Imagined" is the word, for the situation has been pictured in the artist's imagination before it was drawn on the block. this matter of verity got by imaginative treatment, Millais' designs in this book are to be compared to those, also in this book, by J. C. Horsley, and by those of Maclise, who was certainly, of all famous and admired painters, the most feeble in his way of telling a story, presenting an incident, displaying a scene. Now, Millais' directness of insight and readiness of expression, his frank way of telling what he has to tell, were not by themselves technically Pre-Raphaelite, as is shown by his retaining them while he left the peculiarities of the clique behind him. In the hands of Holman Hunt realism of movement, of action, is a different thing. To him comes that strong desire to mingle realism with mediævalism which we have many occasions to notice as we look through the designs of the Pre-Raphaelites. Thus in the Tennyson the two illustrations to "Oriana" are worked out with great care, the very strange scale coat of armor, winged helmet, and short bow as of a horseman, and the action of the lover, and in the first the action of the lady, are taken from life as accurately and even as imaginatively as anything in the work of Millais; while yet the whole picture is, in each case, steeped in an atmosphere of quaintness, of remoteness, of an undated epoch, and of manners made up of the traditions of different races of men. Let all these works be compared with the Maclise illustration to the "Morte D'Arthur," with its feeble drawing and still more feeble conception: and the contrast will be made out very much as if the publishers had wished to favor the Pre-Raphaelites at the expense of their fellow-draughtsmen of the older school. VI THE question of fidelity to nature remains, and must be left for another occasion. There are many kinds of "truth in art," and it is interesting to test one kind by the others. RUSSELL STURGIS. SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE VOL. XL AUGUST, 1906 NO. 2 M ISS MIRANDA SAWYER'S old-fashioned garden was the pleasantest spot in Riverboro on a sunny July morning. The rich color of the brick house gleamed and glowed through the shade of the elm and maples. Luxuriant hop-vines clambered up the lightning-rods and waterspouts, hanging their delicate clusters here and there in graceful profusion. Woodbine transformed the old sheds and toolhouses to things of beauty, and the flowerbeds themselves were the prettiest and most fragrant in all the countryside. A row of dahlias ran directly around the garden spot, dahlias scarlet, gold, and variegated. In the very centre was a round plot where the upturned faces of a thousand pansies smiled amid their leaves, and in the four corners were triangular blocks of sweet phlox over which the butterflies fluttered unceasingly. In the spaces between ran a riot of portulaca and nasturtiums, while in the more regular, shell-bordered beds grew spirea and gillyflowers, mignonette, marigolds and clove pinks. Back of the barn and encroaching on the edge of the hay-field was a grove of sweet clover whose white feathery tips fairly bent under the assaults of the bees, while banks of aromatic mint and thyme drank in the sunshine and sent it out again into the summer air warm and deliciously odorous. The hollyhocks were Miss Sawyer's pride, and they grew in a stately line beneath the four kitchen windows, their tapering tips set thickly with gay satin rosettes of pink or lavender or crimson. VOL. XL.-14 "They look something like steeples," thought little Rebecca Randall, who was weeding the bed, "and the flat round flowers are like rosettes, but steeples wouldn't be studded with rosettes, so if you were writing about them you'd have to give up one or the other, and I guess I'll give up the steeples: "Gay little hollyhock Out from your bed. It's a pity the hollyhock isn't really little, instead of being up to the window top, but I can't say, 'Gay tall hollyhock.' I might have it 'Lines to a Hollyhock in May,' for then it would be small; but oh, no! I forgot; in May it wouldn't be blooming and it's so pretty to say that its head is 'sweetly rosetted.' I wish Miss Dearborn wasn't away; she would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I learned out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of it just like the waves at the beach.” Rebecca, the little niece of the brick house ladies, and at present sojourning there for purposes of board, lodging, and education, had a passion for the rhyme and rhythm of poetry. From her earliest childhood words had always been to her what dolls and toys are to other children, and now at twelve or thirteen she amused herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine of a story took a "cursory glance" about her "apartment" Rebecca would shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a "cursory glance" Copyright, 1906, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved. at her oversewing or hemming; if the villain. "aided and abetted" someone in committing a crime, she would before long request the pleasure of aiding and abetting in dishwashing or bedmaking. Sometimes she used the borrowed phrases unconsciously; sometimes she brought them into the conversation with an intense sense of pleasure in their beauty and appropriateness. "How are you gettin' on, Rebecca Rowena?" called a peremptory voice from within. "Pretty good, Aunt Miranda; only I wish flowers would ever come up as thick as this pigweed and plantain and sorrel. I just happened to be stopping to think a minute when you looked out." "You think considerable more than you weed, I guess, by appearances. How many times have you peeked into that humming. bird's nest? Why don't you work all to once and play all to once, like other folks?" "I don't know," the child answered, confounded by the question, and still more by the apparent logic back of it. "I don't know; but when I'm working outdoors such a Saturday morning as this, the whole creation just screams to me to come and play." "Well, you needn't go if it does!" responded her aunt sharply. "It don't scream to me when I'm rollin' out these doughnuts." Rebecca's little brown hands flew in and out among the weeds as she thought rebelliously; "Creation wouldn't scream to Aunt Miranda; it would know she wouldn't come. "Scream on, thou bright and gay creation, scream! 'Tis not Miranda that will hear thy cry! Oh, such funny nice things come into my head out here by myself, I do wish I could run up and put them down in my thought |