Once it has been recognised that the emotions may be conveyed by pictorial art, we cannot quarrel with the _raison d’être_ of the pre-Raphaelites, though we might disagree with them as to the means they are using. They can however justly demand that those who criticise their means of expression should show the possibility of better ones. Holman Hunt has aimed at evoking by his pictures a feeling of respect and admiration for religion, and in many cases has succeeded; and the means he has employed are a reverential treatment, a style of old associated with religious representations and suggestions of the supernatural. Burne Jones, whose object seems to be to emphasize the higher significance of our spiritual being over our bodily, does so by giving us pictures of maidens whose beauty is of a kind devoid of all those attractions which coquetry, roguishness, animal spirits, and exuberance of health may confer. Their vacant and inward look suggests a contemplative mood and a yearning to see the invisible. As if to still further quicken the sluggish imagination of the masses, he cloaks his figures in draperies and surrounds them by objects which of old have been used in representing holy people. He comes as near as possible to the representation of wingless angels, without presenting anything that could not be seen in reality. Such pictures may not appeal to everybody, but we have overwhelming evidence that they do appeal to a great number; and if the belief in a superiority over animals, in a spiritual personality, in a responsibility for our development, and in a future life contributes to our happiness and exercises an ennobling influence on our race, the pictures of Burne Jones cannot be the work of a degenerate aiming at the degeneration of others. What by many is considered Rossetti’s masterpiece, “Dante’s Dream,” would by a painter, in his capacity of craftsman, be found to contain many defects, and only one great merit—exquisite colouring. The conception is eccentric, the surroundings are symbolic and mystical, and the anatomy is incorrect. There are faults of perspective, some of them glaring. For instance, the left shoulder of the angel of love who stands on the left hand of Beatrice, facing her and bending over her, is partly hidden by Beatrice’s right shoulder, which could not be possible in reality unless the two figures had only two dimensions—height and breadth, with no thickness. And yet this picture has been bought by the Corporation of Liverpool for a large sum, and is considered as a thing of joy and beauty by a mass of people among whom Nordau could detect but a few with malformations of the heads and the ears, and who in the whole of their life have given abundant proof of practical rationalism far greater even than that of the superstitious peasant he instances as having a sound mind.