Monday 8th.--... Gabriel went to see Millais’s picture, which is finished. He himself had to work hard at his background all day, besides doing something to the Virgin’s head; and had Deverell to assist him in doing certain things. I finished reading Browning’s new poem, and read it the second time aloud to Deverell. * * * * * From 8th April, up to to-day Sunday July 21st, I have neglected the P.R.B. Journal. My excuse is, plenty else to do--the impelling cause, idleness. But I hope henceforth to persevere. Firstly, _The Gurm_[229] died with its fourth No.--leaving us a legacy of Tupper’s bill--£33 odd, of which the greater part, I take it, remains still unpaid. Our last gasp was perhaps the best--containing Orchard’s really wonderful _Dialogue_, Gabriel’s sonnets on pictures, etc. etc.; with an etching--not very satisfactory in comparison with the standard of our promise--by Deverell. Placards were posted and paraded about daily before the Academy--but to no effect. _The Germ_ was doomed, and succumbed to its doom. Millais’s sacred subject, his _Ferdinand and Ariel_, and his _Portrait of Mr. Drury and his Grandchild_--Hunt’s _Converted British Family sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids_--and Collinson’s _Answering the Emigrant’s Letter_--went to the Academy, where they are still exhibiting; Gabriel having at the last moment elected to send to the National Institution--formerly Free Exhibition. The “Carpenter’s Shop” of Millais, which has now become famous as “No. 518,” sold, the morning before sending in, for £350--Mr. Farrer the picture-dealer being the purchaser. Hunt’s picture and this are hung half on the line, the portrait on the line, and the _Ferdinand_ on the ground; Collinson’s, at a height where all its merits are lost. Millais’s picture has been the signal for a perfect crusade against the P.R.B. The mystic letters, with their signification, have appeared in all kinds of papers; first, I believe, in a letter, _Town Talk and Table Talk_, in the _Illustrated News_, written by Reach, who must have derived his knowledge, we conjecture, from Munro.[230] But the designation is now so notorious that all concealment is at an end. _The Athenæum_ opened with a savage assault[231] on Gabriel, who answered in a letter which the editor did not think it expedient to publish; and a conversation which Millais had with Frank Stone, and in which the latter (speaking of the picture) introduced several of the observations of _The Athenæum_, coupled with some other circumstances, make it tolerably evident that _he_ was the author of that and subsequent critiques. In noticing Hunt and Millais, nearly a whole page was devoted to a systematic discussion of (assumed) P.R.B. principles--which F. S. rather overthrew and demolished than otherwise. In all the papers--_The Times_, _The Examiner_, _The Daily News_, even to Dickens’s _Household Words_, where a leader was devoted to the