Mr. W.M. Rossetti thus succinctly sums up the immediate issue of the movement which his brother inspired:—“As it turned out, the early phases of the movement did not repeat themselves on a more extended scale. Partly, no doubt, through the modification of style of the most popular Pre-Raphaelite, Mr. Millais, and partly through the influx of new determining conditions, especially the effect of foreign schools and of Mr. Leighton’s style (this was written in 1865), Pre-Raphaelitism flagged in its influence towards the production of what are distinctively termed Pre-Raphaelite pictures just at the time when it had virtually won the day. But the movement had broken up the pre- existing state of things, and the principles and practices which it introduced took strong root, and germinated in forms not altogether expected. Pre-Raphaelitism aimed at suppressing such styles of painting as were exemplified by Messrs. Elmore, Goodall, and Stone at the time of its starting; _and it did suppress them_.”[6] The relation of Pre-Raphaelitism to the “foreign schools” here referred to is as much a matter of historical controversy as the relation of Rossetti to Italy is of biographical criticism; nor is it easy to determine how far the Pre-Raphaelite movement in England was the effect or the cause of similar waves of experiment in France and Germany, and how far all such impulses were but the symptoms of a great social and ethical development in European life. But while the Barbizon School must be seriously recognized as working side by side with the Pre-Raphaelites upon kindred ideals, and even surpassing them at some points in a certain largeness of outlook on humanitarian themes, the influence of Cornelius and Overbeck in Germany, with the very crude and sickly mediævalism which they affected, has no doubt been greatly overrated, and may be dismissed as having very little to do with the main current of the romantic revival. In France, Corot and Millet, Daubigny and Rousseau, had taken their stand against the old Heroic School in art, just as Théophile Gautier and Victor Hugo had taken it against the Academies of literature. In England, it was the task of Rossetti and his comrades “to force,” as it has been aptly expressed, “an artificial art backed upon nature’s reality; and they did it amid neglect, misunderstanding, and even coarse vituperation.” ----- Footnote 5: Gerald Massey: “Lectures on Pre-Raphaelitism,” 1858. Footnote 6: W.M. Rossetti: “Fine Art; Chiefly Contemporary.” CHAPTER V. LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF THE MOVEMENT.