impatience, in such sort, is not wholly unreasonable. For truly, a painter who has eyes can, for the most part, see what he "likes" with them; and is, by divine law, answerable for his liking. And, even at this late hour of the day, it is still conceivable that such of them as would _verily_ prefer to see, suppose, instead of a tramp with a harmonium, Orpheus with his lute, or Arion on his dolphin, pleased Proteus rising beside him from the sea,--might, standing on the "pleasant lea" of Margate or Brighton, have sight of those personages. Orpheus with his lute,--Jubal with his harp and horn,--Harmonia, bride of the warrior seed-sower,--Musica herself, lady of all timely thought and sweetly ordered things,--Cantatrice and Incantatrice to all but the museless adder; these the Amphion of Fesole saw, as he shaped the marble of his tower; these, Memmi of Siena, fair-figured on the shadows of his vault;--but for us, here is the only manifestation granted to our best practical painter--a vagrant with harmonium--and yonder blackbirds and iridescent jackasses, to be harmonized thereby. 244. Our best _painter_ (among the living) I say;--no question has ever been of that. Since Van Eyck and Duerer there has nothing been seen so well done in laying of clear oil-color within definite line. And what he might have painted for us, if _we_ had only known what we would have of him! Heaven only knows. But we none of us knew,--nor he neither; and on the whole the perfectest of his works, and the representative picture of that generation--was no Annunciate Maria bowing herself; but only a Newsless Mariana stretching herself: which is indeed the best symbol of the mud-moated Nineteenth century; in _its_ Grange, Stable--Sty, or whatever name of dwelling may best befit the things it calls Houses and Cities: imprisoned therein by the unassailablest of walls, and blackest of ditches--by the pride of Babel, and the filthiness of Aholah and Aholibamah; and their worse younger sister;--craving for any manner of News from any world--and getting none trustworthy even of its own. 245. I said that in this second paper I would try to give some brief history of the rise, and the issue, of that Pre-Raphaelite school: but, as I look over two of the essays[47] that were printed with mine in that last number of the _Nineteenth Century_--the first--in laud of the Science which accepts for practical spirits, inside of men, only Avarice and Indolence; and the other,--in laud of the Science which "rejects the Worker" outside of Men, I am less and less confident in offering to the readers of the _Nineteenth Century_ any History relating to such despised things as unavaricious industry,--or incorporeal vision. I will be as brief as I can.