The works which have been reproduced as illustrations to this summary of the career of one of the greatest artists whom the British school has known have been selected with the intention of representing the more important stages in his progress. It is comparatively easy to divide his life into different periods, each one of which was marked by some achievements of more than ordinary significance. Thus the _Christ in the House of His Parents_ (1849), and _Ophelia_ (1852) belong to the time when he was a devout believer in the creed of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; _Autumn Leaves_ (1856) and _The Vale of Rest_ (1858) show the first beginnings of the change of conviction which led him a few years later to an almost complete abandonment of his earlier principles; _A Souvenir of Velasquez_ (1868) marks the end of the transition from his youthful methods to the vigorous freedom of his middle life; _The North-West Passage_ (1874) and _A Yeoman of the Guard_ (1876), the triumphant attainment of absolute mastery over all the details of his craft, and the _Thomas Carlyle_ (1877), the commencement of that period of sober confidence in his perfected skill which continued till his death in 1896. There is hardly one of these pictures which does not by its superlative quality deserve a place among the great things that may be said to have made our art history. They show Sir John Millais not only as a splendid executant but also as a frank and sincere thinker on art questions, who did not hesitate to modify his opinions as his widening experience proved to him that a better way than the one which he was following at the moment might be found to lead him to the highest results. It is a fortunate circumstance that with one exception the whole of this group of noble works can be counted as public property. They have passed into galleries where they are always accessible, and they are within the reach of every student who wishes to profit by the great lessons they are able to teach. CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF HIS PARENTS This is the earliest and in some respects the most ambitious of the Pre-Raphaelite pictures. In it all the resources of Pre-Raphaelitism are turned to good account, and the logic of the creed is asserted with unquestioning faith. A verse in Zechariah, "And one shall say unto him, 'What are these wounds in thine hands?' Then he shall answer, 'Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends,'" provided the motive, and the love of exact and searching observation which was from the first the governing principle of the artist's practice, controlled every detail of the execution.