justified my claiming for him total, and, I believe, earliest, originality in the sternly materialistic, though deeply reverent, veracity, with which alone, of all schools of painters, this brotherhood of Englishmen has conceived the circumstances of the life of Christ. And if I had to choose one picture which represented in purity and completeness this manner of their thought, it would be Rossetti's "Virgin in the House of St. John."

To

But when Holman Hunt, under such impressive influence, quitting virtually for ever the range of worldly subjects, to which belonged the pictures of Valentine and Sylvia, of Claudio and Isabel, and of the "Awakening Conscience," rose into the spiritual passion which first expressed itself in the "Light of the World," an instant and quite final difference was manifested between his method of conception, and that of his forerunner. Rossetti, the Old and New Testaments were only the greatest poems he knew; and he painted scenes from them with no more actual belief in their relation to the present life and business of men than he gave also to the Morte d'Arthur and the Vita Nuova. But to Holman Hunt, the story of the New Testament, when once his mind. entirely fastened on it, became what it was to an old Puritan, or an old Catholic of true blood,not merely a Reality, not merely the greatest of Realities, but the only Reality. So that there is

nothing in the earth for him any more that does not speak of that;-there is no course of thought nor force of skill for him, but it springs from and ends in that.-A. E., I.

41. E. BURNE-JONES.-The realistic school could only develop its complete force in representing persons, and could not happily rest in personifications. Nevertheless, we find one of the artists whose close friendship with Rossetti, and fellowship with other members of the PreRaphaelite brotherhood, have more or less identified his work with theirs, yet differing from them all diametrically in this, that his essential gift and habit of thought is in personification, and that,for sharp and brief instance, had both Rossetti and he been set to illustrate the first chapter of Genesis, Rossetti would have painted either Adam or Eve-but Edward Burne-Jones, a Day of Creation.

And in this gift, he becomes a painter, neither of Divine History, nor of Divine Natural History, but of Mythology, accepted as such, and understood by its symbolic figures to represent only general truths, or abstract ideas.

And here I must at once pray you, as I have prayed you to remove all associations of falsehood from the word romance, so also to clear them out of your faith, when you begin the study of mythology. Never confuse a Myth with a lie,-nay, you

must even be cautious how far you even permit it to be called a fable. Take the frequentest and simplest of myths, for instance that of Fortune and her wheel. Enid does not herself conceive, or in the least intend the hearers of her song to conceive, that there stands anywhere in the universe a real woman, turning an adamantine wheel whose revolutions have power over human destiny. She means only to assert, under that image, more clearly the law of Heaven's continual dealing with man,-" He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek."

But in the imagined symbol, or rather let me say, the visiting and visible dream, of this law, other ideas variously conducive to its clearness are gathered; those of gradual and irresistible motion of rise and fall,-the tide of Fortune, as distinguished from instant change or catastrophe; those of the connection of the fates of men with each other, the yielding and occupation of high place, the alternately appointed and inevitable humiliation-and the fastening, in the sight of the Ruler of Destiny, of all to the mighty axle which moves only as the axle of the world. These things are told or hinted to you, in the mythic picture, not with the impertinence and the narrowness of words, nor in any order compelling a monotonous succession of thought,-but each as you choose or chance to read it, to be rested in, or proceeded with, as you will.

Here then is the ground on which the Dramatic, or personal, and Mythic, or personifying, schools of our young painters, whether we find for them a general name or not, must be thought of as absolutely one-that, as the dramatic painters seek to show you the substantial truth of persons, so the mythic school seeks to teach you the spiritual truth of myths.

Truth is the vital power of the entire school,Truth its armour-Truth its war-word; and the grotesque and wild forms of imagination which, at first sight, seem to be the reaction of a desperate fancy, and a terrified faith, against the incisive scepticism of recent science, so far from being so, are part of that science itself: they are the results of infinitely more accurate scholarship, of infinitely more detective examination, of infinitely more just and scrupulous integrity of thought, than was possible to any artist during the two preceding centuries; and exactly as the eager and sympathetic passion of the dramatic designer now assures you of the way in which an event happened, so the scholarly and sympathetic thought of the mythic designer now assures you of the meaning, in what a fable said. . . .

And herein you see with what a deeply interesting function the modern painter of mythology is invested. He is to place, at the service of former imagination, the art which it had not-and to realise for us, with a truth then impossible, the

visions described by the wisest of men as embodying their most pious thoughts and their most exalted doctrines: not indeed attempting with any literal exactitude to follow the words of the visionary, for no man can enter literally into the mind of another, neither can any great designer refuse to obey the suggestions of his own: but only bringing the resources of accomplished art to unveil the hidden splendour of old imagination; and showing us that the forms of gods and angels which appeared in fancy to the prophets and saints of antiquity, were indeed more natural and beautiful than the black and red shadows on a Greek vase, or the dogmatic outlines of a Byzantine fresco.

It should be a ground of just pride to all of us here in Oxford, that out of this University came the painter whose indefatigable scholarship and exhaustless fancy have together fitted him for this task, in a degree far distinguishing him above all contemporary European designers. It is impossible for the general public to estimate the quantity of careful and investigatory reading, and the fine tact of literary discrimination, which are signified by the command now possessed by Mr. BurneJones over the entire range both of Northern and Greek Mythology, or the tenderness at once, and largeness, of sympathy which have enabled him to harmonise these with the loveliest traditions of Christian legend. Hitherto, there has been

SECOND SERIES.

H