connected with the Pre-Raffaelle Brethren, whose paintings have
attracted this year a more than ordinary quantity of attention, and
an amount of praise and blame perhaps equally extravagant. As might
have been expected, the school has been identified with its cleverest
manipulator, Mr. Millais, and his merits or defects have been made
the measure of the admiration or contempt bestowed by the public upon
those whom it chooses to class with him. This is not matter of
complaint, but it is a mistake. As far as these papers enable us to
judge, Mr. Millais is by no means the leading _mind_ among his
fraternity; and judged by the principles of some clever and beautiful
papers upon art in the magazine before us, his pictures would be
described by them as wanting in some of the very highest artistic
qualities, although possessing many which entitle them to attention
and respect. The chief contributors to this magazine (to which Mr.
Millais contributes nothing) are other artists, as yet not greatly
known, but with feeling and purpose about them such as must make them
remarkable in time. Some of the best papers are by two brothers named
Rossetti, one of whom, Mr. D. G. Rossetti, has a very curious but
very striking picture now exhibiting in the Portland Gallery. Mr.
Deverell, who has also a very clever picture in the same gallery,
contributes some beautiful poetry. It is perhaps chiefly in the
poetry that the abilities of these writers are displayed; for, with
somewhat absurd and much that is affected, there is yet in the
poetical pieces of these four numbers a beauty and grace of language
and sentiment, and not seldom a vigour of conception, altogether
above the common run. Want of purpose may be easily charged against
them as a fault, and with some justice, but it is a very common
defect of youthful poetry, which is sure to disappear with time if
there be anything real and manly in the poet. The best pieces are too
long to extracted in entire, and are not to be judged of fairly