But after a little while things began to mend. The attack exhausted itself by its very excess of virulence; and here and there strong men came forward to champion the cause of the Pre-Raphaelites. Mr. Ruskin, especially, appeared in the arena as an enthusiastic advocate of an undertaking that was in every way calculated to appeal to his vivid sympathies. He declared with acute and prophetic insight that the pilloried artists were laying "the foundations of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for three hundred years." His explanations of their methods were just what were wanted to set people thinking. Some years, it is true, elapsed before his enthusiasm, and the dogged perseverance of the young men, finally converted the great majority of art lovers; but the conversion did come, and it was complete. Meanwhile Millais was manfully playing his part in the struggle, giving no sign that he minded being, as he put it in after years, "so dreadfully bullied." Nothing could shake his resolve to work out his artistic destiny in the way he thought best. Happily he was not entirely without encouragement from the chiefs of his own profession, for just at the time when the outside world was decrying him most strenuously, the Academy elected him an Associate. This election, was, however, quashed, because he was discovered to be under the age at which admission was possible, and it was not till 1853 that he was again chosen. By this time he had added to the list of his paintings his exquisite _Ophelia_, _The Huguenot_, _The Proscribed Royalist_ and _The Order of Release_, all works of the highest value, and regarded to-day as evidences of a quite extraordinary ability.