246. The central branch of the school, represented by the central picture above described:--"The Blind Girl"--was essentially and vitally an uneducated one. It was headed, in literary power, by Wordsworth; but the first pure example of its mind and manner of Art, as opposed to the erudite and _artificial_ schools, will be found, so far as I know, in Moliere's song: _j'aime mieux ma mie_. Its mental power consisted in discerning what was lovely in present nature, and in pure moral emotion concerning it. Its physical power, in an intense veracity of direct realization to the eye. So far as Mr. Millais saw what was beautiful in vagrants, or commons, or crows, or donkeys, or the straw under children's feet in the Ark (Noah's or anybody else's does not matter),--in the Huguenot and his mistress, or the ivy behind them,--in the face of Ophelia, or in the flowers floating over it as it sank;--much more, so far as he saw what instantly comprehensible nobleness of passion might be in the binding of a handkerchief,--in the utterance of two words, "Trust me" or the like: he prevailed, and rightly prevailed, over all prejudice and opposition; to that extent he will in what he has done, or may yet do, take, as a standard-bearer, an honorable place among the reformers of our day. So far as he could not see what was beautiful, but what was essentially and forever common (in that God had not cleansed it), and so far as he did not see truly what he thought he saw; (as for instance, in this picture, under immediate consideration, when he paints the spark of light in a crow's eye a hundred yards off, as if he were only painting a miniature of a crow close by,)--he failed of his purpose and hope; but how far I have neither the power nor the disposition to consider.