At this period, as we know, English painting was at a low ebb, mediocre and conventional, though with a show of artificial brilliance. Ruskin, with his scorn of the artificial and scholastic, threw himself into the work of overturning the established, complacent school of the time, and with splendid enthusiasm and an unfailing belief in himself and his ideas he undertook to reform what had been, and to raise current conceptions of art to a more exalted and lofty plane. We have seen what he had already achieved in his first dashing period of literary activity, in the production of the early volumes of "Modern Painters," and in his "Seven Lamps" and "Stones of Venice." While he was at work on the concluding volumes of the first and last of these great books there arose in England the somewhat fantastic movement in art, launched by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which included such Ruskinites and other devotees of early Christian and mediaeval painting as Rossetti, Millais, Morris, Burne-Jones, and Holman Hunt. Towards this new school of symbolists and affectationists Ruskin was not at first drawn, since it seemed to him unduly idealistic, if not mystic, and smacked not a little, as he thought, of popery. Later, however, he saw good in it, as a breaking away from academic trammels; while he recognized the earnest enthusiasm of the little band of artists and artist-poets, as well as their technical dexterity and brilliance. With ready decision as well as with his accustomed zeal for art, Ruskin ended by defending and applauding the new innovators, particularly as their chief motive was the one the master had always strenuously pled for,--adherence to the simplicity of nature. Their scrupulous attention to detail, characteristic of the Pre-Raphaelites, later on bore good results, even after the Brotherhood fell apart, especially in William Morris's application of their art-principles to household decoration and furnishings. But for the time the movement was loudly mocked and decried, and perhaps all the more because of Ruskin's espousal of the fervid band, his letters of defence in the London "Times," and his discussion in his booklet on "Pre-Raphaelitism." Heedless of the outcry, Ruskin pursued his own self-confident course, and by the year 1860 he had completed his "Modern Painters," and, in spite of objurgation and detraction, had won a great name for himself as a critic and expounder, while expanding himself over almost the whole world of art.