V. The Bower Meadow 40 From the Oil Painting in the collection of the late Sir John Milburn, Bart., Acklington, Northumberland VI. The Borgia Family 50 From the Water-Colour In South Kensington Museum VII. Dante's Dream 60 From the Oil Painting in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool VIII. Astarte Syriaca 70 From the Oil Painting in the Manchester Art Gallery [Illustration: Rossetti] I About the middle of the nineteenth century Europe woke to the fact that Art, despite its pretention, had lost all touch with tradition and, like a blind man deprived of his staff, stood fumbling for direction. The necessary "point d'appui" took shape in a return to nature. This return was effected by very different means according to the country and artistic milieu in which it occurred. In England it was really a revival of the schools of painting that preceded Raphael and resulted in grafting the complicated passions of our century upon the naïve outlook of the early Italians. The more logical mind of the Frenchman saw that it was not enough to look at nature through the eyes of the Primitives. The point of view had perforce changed and all that it was necessary to borrow from the early schools was the sincerity they brought to the interpretation of phenomena. We have been told that, in contrast to the continental movement, the realism of the Pre-Raphaelites was applied only to noble subjects. But what is a noble subject? The distinction is a purely literary one. There are no noble subjects in art; there are only harmonies of line and colour. For example this school would prefer the rose to the cabbage as a subject, on account of the symbols attached to it. It is the Queen of Flowers, the Mystic Rose, &c., &c. But is the rose greater than the cabbage from a purely pictorial point of view? It depends entirely upon how far the painter is able to reveal the beauty, the harmony of form and colour of either. The symbolistic appanage of the rose will not suffice of itself to make a picture, nor for the lack of these symbols may we condemn the cabbage.