room or landscape must be painted, and the figures grouped without reference to arrangement; also that for each figure a definite model must be taken and followed even to the extent of blemishes. This counsel of perfection, if it was ever seriously accepted, was certainly not followed even from the first; but the fact of its proposal shows the austere lines upon which these youthful painters proceeded, and helps to explain what many people have found a stumbling-block, the lack of grace and harmony in some of their earliest compositions. What they sought to follow in the old Italian models, however, with all their archaism and immaturity of skill was the honest striving after nature, sincerity of style, decorative simplicity, and, by no means least, the pious selection of worthy subjects. It is this last quality, exhibited alike by all the members of the Brotherhood, that more plainly than anything marks the cleavage between their "pre-Raphaelite" work and the commonplace painting of the day. They set themselves to paint great and ennobling subjects, often greater than they could achieve, out of their imagination, when the rest of the world (always excepting men like Madox Brown, who belonged to them in spirit) were painting what Ruskin calls "'cattle-pieces,' and 'sea-pieces,' and 'fruit-pieces,' and 'family-pieces'; the eternal brown cows in ditches, and white sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in saucers, and foolish faces in simpers." In the inauguration of the "Brotherhood" Rossetti took a specially active part, and the title itself was invented by him. "Rossetti," says Mr. Hunt, "with his spirit alike subtle and fiery, was essentially a proselytiser, sometimes to an almost absurd degree, but possessed, alike in his poetry and painting, with an appreciation of beauty of the most intense quality." Mr. Hunt adds that the title of "Pre-Raphaelite" was adopted partly in a spirit of fun, and, like other names which have acquired honour, was originally a term of reproach invented by their enemies. On this account they prudently decided to keep it secret, and to let no outward symbol of their union appear beyond the mystic initials P.R.B., which were to be used on all their pictures and in private intercourse.