233. Such being the manifestly opponent and agonistic temper of these three pictures (and admitting, which I will crave the reader to do for the nonce, their real worth and power to be considerable), it surely becomes a matter of no little interest to see what spirit it is that they have in common, which, recognized as revolutionary in the minds of the young artists themselves, caused them, with more or less of firmness, to constitute themselves into a society, partly monastic, partly predicatory, called "Pre-Raphaelite": and also recognized as such, with indignation, by the public, caused the youthfully didactic society to be regarded with various degrees of contempt, passing into anger (as of offended personal dignity), and embittered farther, among certain classes of persons, even into a kind of instinctive abhorrence. 234. I believe the reader will discover, on reflection, that there is really only one quite common and sympathetic impulse shown in these three works, otherwise so distinct in aim and execution. And this fraternal link he will, if careful in reflection, discover to be an effort to represent, so far as in these youths lay either the choice or the power, things as they are, or were, or may be, instead of, according to the practice of their instructors and the wishes of their public, things as they are _not_, never were, and never can be: this effort being founded deeply on a conviction that it is at first better, and finally more pleasing, for human minds to contemplate things as they are, than as they are not. Thus, Mr. Rossetti, in this and subsequent works of the kind, thought it better for himself and his public to make some effort towards a real notion of what actually did happen in the carpenter's cottage at Nazareth, giving rise to the subsequent traditions delivered in the Gospels, than merely to produce a variety in the pattern of Virgin, pattern of Virgin's gown, and pattern of Virgin's house, which had been set by the jewelers of the fifteenth century. Similarly, Mr. Millais, in this and other works of the kind, thought it desirable rather to paint such grass and foliage as he saw in Kent, Surrey, and other solidly accessible English counties, than to imitate even the most Elysian fields enameled by Claude, or the gloomiest branches of Hades forest rent by Salvator: and yet more, to manifest his own strong personal feeling that the humanity, no less than the herbage, near us and around, was that which it was the painter's duty first to portray; and that, if Wordsworth were indeed right in feeling that the meanest flower that blows can give,--much more, for any kindly heart it should be true that the meanest tramp that walks can give--"thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."