[41] This state of mind appears to have been the only one which Wordsworth had been able to discern in men of science; and in disdain of which, he wrote that short-sighted passage in the Excursion, Book III, P. 165-190, which is, I think, the only one in the whole range of his works which his true friends would have desired to see blotted out. What else has been found fault with as feeble or superfluous, is not so in the intense distinctive relief which it gives to his character. But these lines are written in mere ignorance of the matter they treat; in mere want of sympathy with the men they describe: for, observe, though the passage is put into the mouth of the Solitary, it is fully confirmed, and even rendered more scornful, by the speech which follows. THE THREE COLORS OF PRE-RAPHAELITISM.[42] I. 226. I was lately staying in a country house, in which, opposite each other at the sides of the drawing-room window, were two pictures, belonging to what in the nineteenth century must be called old times, namely Rossetti's "Annunciation," and Millais' "Blind Girl"; while, at the corner of the chimney-piece in the same room, there was a little drawing of a Marriage-dance, by Edward Burne Jones. And in my bedroom, at one side of my bed, there was a photograph of the tomb of Ilaria di Caretto at Lucca, and on the other, an engraving, in long since superannuated manner, from Raphael's "Transfiguration." Also over the looking-glass in my bedroom, there was this large illuminated text, fairly well written, but with more vermilion in it than was needful; "Lord, teach us to pray." And for many reasons I would fain endeavor to tell my Oxford pupils some facts which seem to me worth memory about these six works of art; which, if they will reflect upon, being, in the present state of my health, the best I can do for them in the way of autumn lecturing, it will be kind to me. And as I cannot speak what I would say, and believe my pupils are more likely to read it if printed in the _Nineteenth Century_ than in a separate pamphlet, I have asked, and obtained of the editor, space in columns which ought, nevertheless, I think, usually to be occupied with sterner subjects, as the Fates are now driving the nineteenth century on its missionary path. 227. The first picture I named, Rossetti's "Annunciation," was, I believe, among the earliest that drew some public attention to the so-called "Pre-Raphaelite" school. The one opposite to it,--Millais' "Blind Girl," is among those chiefly characteristic of that school in its determined manner. And the third, though small and unimportant, is no less characteristic, in its essential qualities, of the mind of the greatest master whom that school has yet produced.