In such a spirit did Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his comrades turn from the dull abstractions of academic tradition, and lift their eyes towards that golden age whose dawning answered their own cry for light. Not to the material and redundant splendours of Raphaelesque art did they look for the inspiration of the hour; not to the pseudoclassicism of the later Renaissance, but to the pristine freshness and purity of its youth: just as we now look for the true significance of the romantic revival, not to the Postlethwaite of fashionable society, or to the weak sensuality of a drawing-room æstheticism; not to the latter-day apotheosis of lust which is but a gross travesty of the vigorous naturalism of Hellenic and early Renaissance art, but to the gracious innocence and seriousness of Rossetti’s “Virgin,” the noble beauty and pathos of his dying “Beatrice,” and the austere tenderness of Hunt’s sore-tempted “Isabella,” confronting Claudio’s painful face with the set resolve of her impregnable womanhood. So, seeking and following all that was best in the past, and facing, with vision clarified by that high discipline, the intellectual, social, and moral strife of the nineteenth century, the young painters set themselves “to disengage,” as Sainte- Beuve says, “the elements of beauty,” and to put them forth in some sort of order and lucidity, even if it were but in a tentative formula, yet to be subjected to the tests of time. ----- Footnote 2: “Some Thoughts on the Transition from Paganism to Christianity.” CHAPTER III. THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. The Revolt from the Raphaelesque—Influence of Keats and the Romantic Poets—The Pre-Raphaelite Brothers and their Early Work—Travels of Rossetti with Hunt—Publication of “The Germ”—Hunt and Millais in the Royal Academy—Ruskin’s Letters to the “Times”—Pre-Raphaelitism at Liverpool—The Pre-Raphaelites as Colourists.