All three appeared before the public for the first time in the year 1849. John Millais and Holman Hunt exhibited in the Royal Academy, the one being represented by his "Lorenzo and Isabella," a subject drawn from Keats, the other by his "Rienzi." Rossetti had his picture, "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," exhibited at the Free Exhibition, afterwards known as the Portland Gallery. All three works excited attention and also derision, and much shaking of heads. The three next works of 1850--"A Converted British Family sheltering a Christian Missionary," by Holman Hunt; "The Child Jesus in the Workshop of Joseph the Carpenter," by Millais; and "The Annunciation" by Rossetti--were received with the same amused contempt. When they exhibited for the third time--Holman Hunt, a scene from _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_; Millais, "The Return of the Dove to the Ark" and "The Woodman's Daughter"--such a storm of excitement broke forth that the pictures had to be removed from the exhibition. A furious article appeared in _The Art Journal_; the exhibitors, it was said, were certainly young, but they were too old to commit such sins of youth. Even Dickens turned against them in _Household Words_. The painters who had been assailed made their answer. William Michael Rossetti laid down the principles of the Brotherhood by an article in a periodical called _The Critic_, and smuggled a second article into _The Spectator_. In 1850 they founded a monthly magazine for the defence of their theories, _The Germ_, which on the third number took the title _Art and Poetry_, and was most charmingly embellished with drawings by Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, and others. Stephens published an essay in it, on the ways and aims of the early Italians, which gave him occasion to discuss the works recently produced in the spirit of simplicity known to these old masters. Madox Brown wrote a paper on historical painting, in which he asserted that the true basis of historical painting must be strict fidelity to the model, to the exclusion of all generalisation and beautifying, and exact antiquarian study of costumes and furniture in contradistinction to the fancy history of the elder painters. But all these articles were written to no purpose. After the fourth number the magazine was stopped, and in these days it has become a curiosity for bibliomaniacs. But support came from another side. Holman Hunt's picture dealing with a scene from Shakespeare's _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ received the most trenchant condemnation in _The Times_. John Ruskin came forward as his champion and replied on 13th May 1851. _The Times_ contained yet a second letter from him on 30th May. And soon afterwards both were issued as a pamphlet, with the title _Pre-Raphaelitism_, _its Principles, and Turner_. These works, he said, did not imitate old pictures, but nature; what alienated the public in them was their truth and rightness, which had broken abruptly and successfully with the conventional sweep of lines.