that which degrades and sends us back to forms and ideas totally out
of place in the nineteenth century, and which, for that very reason,
can have nothing but a temporary reign, to be followed in the
succeeding age by a violent reaction.

On a former occasion, we drew attention to this tendency towards
mediævalism as regards ornamental design, and took the Great
Exhibition to witness the fact. We have also pointed to that strange
phenomenon, the rise anew of monastic institutions among us, long
after their object is accomplished, giving a spectre-like expression
to an obsolete idea; we have exposed, likewise, the inclination of the
working-classes to trust to the protection, and, on every emergency,
claim as a matter of right the aid of the wealthy, thus wilfully and
deliberately returning to the condition of serfdom: we have now to
trace the mediæval mania in a department where, notwithstanding all
this ominous conjunction of symptoms, its appearance is truly
surprising--in the department of high art in painting.

Our readers need not fear that we are about to inflict on them a
scientific dissertation. All we wish to do, is to explain to them a
word, with the meaning of which many of them are very imperfectly
acquainted, and by the mere explanation, to enable them to determine
upon its claims to designate--not merely _a_ school, but _the_ school
of art, destined, if founded in truth and nature, to overturn every
other. This word--Pre-Raphaelitism--is taken from the name of one of
the Italian masters, and it is necessary, in order to understand the
question, to ascertain what were the circumstances and the genius that
have thus set him up as a landmark in the history of art.

After the fall of the Western Empire, the fine arts were lost, and