He went home, and wrote his verdict in a letter to _The Times_ (May 9, 1851). Next day he asked the price of Hunt's "Two Gentlemen of Verona," and Millais' "Return of the Dove." On the 13th his letter appeared in _The Times_, and on the 26th he wrote again, pointing out beauties, and indications of power in conception, and observation of Nature, and handling, where at first he, like the rest of the public, had been repelled by the wilful ugliness of the faces. Meanwhile the Pre-Raphaelites wrote to tell him that they were neither Papists nor Puseyites. The day after his second letter was published he received an ill-spelt missive, anonymously abusing them. This was the sort of thing to interest his love of poetical justice. He made the acquaintance of several of the Brethren. "Charley" Collins, as his friends affectionately called him, was the son of a respected R.A., and the brother of Wilkie Collins; himself afterwards the author of a delightful book of travel in France, "A Cruise upon Wheels." Millais turned out to be the most gifted, charming and handsome of young artists. Holman Hunt was already a Ruskin-reader, and a seeker after truth, serious and earnest in his religious nature as in his painting. The Pre-Raphaelites were not, originally, Ruskin's pupils, nor was their movement, directly, of his creation. But it was the outcome of a general tendency which he, more than any man, had helped to set in motion; and it was the fulfilment, though in a way he had not expected, of his wishes. His attraction to Pre-Raphaelitism was none the less real because it was sudden, and brought about partly by personal influence. And in re-arranging his art-theory to take them in, he had before his mind rather what he hoped they would become than what they were. For a time, his influence over them was great; their first three years were their own; their next three years were practically his; and some of them, the weaker brethren, leaned upon him until they lost the command of their own powers. No artist can afford to use another man's eyes; still less, another man's brain and heart. Ruskin, great as an exponent, was in no sense a master of artists; and if he cheered on the men, who, he believed, were the best of the time, it did not follow that he should be saddled with the responsibility of directing them.