less vehement denunciation by the critics than the painter’s treatment of the Holy Family. “We do not want,” they said, “to see Ariel and the Spirits of the enchanted isle in the attitudes and shapes of green goblins, or the gallant Ferdinand twisted like a posture-master by Albrecht Dürer.... A Ferdinand of most ignoble physiognomy is being lured by a pea-green monster, intended for Ariel, whilst a row of sprites, such as it takes a Millais to devise, watch the operation with turquoise eyes. It would occupy more room than the thing is worth to expose all the absurdity and impertinence of this work.” [Illustration: “ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI!” _From the National Gallery._ ] From such extravagance of hostility the efforts of Holman Hunt were spared for the present; and his contribution to the Academy of 1850, “Christian Priests Escaping from Druid Persecution” (better known as “The Christian Missionary,”) though sharing in the general condemnation of the Pre-Raphaelite “heresy and schism,” was not singled out for special objurgation. Rossetti’s great achievement of the year was the most beautiful, and at the same time the most dramatic, of his strictly Pre-Raphaelite work, the “Ecce Ancilla Domini” (“The Annunciation,”) now in the National Gallery. The first rough sketch for this picture—a small water-colour not more than six inches by four—was painted as early as 1847 in the Cleveland Street studio shared with Hunt. The completed work was rejected by the Academy, and seen only in the obscure little Portland Gallery in Regent Street.