We speak of it as a School, though yet in its rudiments, because it has a distinctive character, a real purpose,--and because it is the embodiment of the new-age spirit of truth-seeking, of the spirit of science, rather than that of song. Among the pictures contributed to the English exhibition by the Pre-Raphaelites, there are very few which do not convey the distinct impression of a determined effort to realize certain truths. There are few which succeed entirely; but this is so far from astonishing, that we have only to think that the oldest of these artists has hardly passed his first decade of recognized artistic existence, and that their aims are new in Art, to wonder that so much of fresh and subtile truth is given. There are two respects in which nearly all the works of the school agree, and which have come to be regarded by superficial students of Art as its characteristics, namely, that they are very deficient in drawing and devoid of grace. Both deficiencies are such as might have been expected from the circumstances. Young men filled with earnestness and enthusiasm, and with an artistic purpose full in view, will spend little time in acquiring academic excellences, or trouble themselves much with methods or styles of drawing. They dash at once to their purpose, and let technical excellence follow, as it ought, in the train of the idea of their work. Of course they do not compare, as draughtsmen and technists, with men who have spent years in getting a knowledge of the proportions of the human figure, and the best methods of applying color; but, on the other hand, they are safe from that most alluring and fatal course of study which makes the subject only a lay figure to display artistic capacity on. Of all the pictures of the school, in the collection of which we speak, there is but one of academic excellence in drawing,--the "King Lear" of Ford Madox Brown. All the others have errors, and some of them to a ludicrous degree; but wherever refined drawing is needed to convey the idea of the picture, no school can furnish drawing more subtile and expressive. The head of the "Light of the World" is worthy in this respect to be placed beside Raphael and Da Vinci; and the "Ophelia" of Hughes, though inexcusably incorrect in the figure, has a refinement of drawing in the face, and especially in the lines of the open, chanting mouth, which no draughtsman of the French school can equal. It is where the idea guides the hand that the Pre-Raphaelites are triumphant; everywhere else they fail. But this is a fault which will correct itself as they learn the significance and value of things they do not now understand. They paint well that which they love, and devotion grows and widens its sphere the longer it endures, taking in, little by little, all things which bear relation to the thought or thing it clings to; and the man who draws because he has something to tell, and draws _that_ well, is certain of finally drawing all things well.