Vinci; and the “Ophelia” of Hughes, though inexcusably incorrect in the figure, has a refinement of drawing in the face, and especially in the lines of the open, chanting mouth, which no draughtsman of the French school can equal.  It is where the idea guides the hand that the Pre-Raphaelites are triumphant; everywhere else they fail.  But this is a fault which will correct itself as they learn the significance and value of things they do not now understand.  They paint well that which they love, and devotion grows and widens its sphere the longer it endures, taking in, little by little, all things which bear relation to the thought or thing it clings to; and the man who draws because he has something to tell, and draws that well, is certain of finally drawing all things well.  This very deficiency of Pre-Raphaelitism, then, points to its true excellence, and indicates that singleness of purpose which is an element in all true Art.  The want of grace, which is made almost a synonyme with Pre-Raphaelitism, has its origin in the same resolute clinging to truth as the artist comprehends it, and uncompromising determination to express it as perfectly as he has the power,—­a feeling which never permits him to think whether his work be graceful, but whether it be just; so that his tremulous and almost fearful conscientiousness—­tremulous with desire to see all, and fearful lest some line should wander by a hair’s breadth from its fullest expressiveness—­makes him lose sight entirely of grace and repose.  No form that has the appearance of being painfully drawn can ever be a graceful one; and so the Pre-Raphaelite, until he has something of a master’s facility and decision, can never be graceful.  The artist who prefers grace to truth will never be remarkable either for grace or truth, while the one who clings to truth at all sacrifices will finally reach the expression of the highest degree of beauty which his soul is capable of conceiving; for the lines of highest beauty and supremest truth are coincident.  The Ideal meets the Actual finally in the Real.

If there be one point of feeling in which the Pre-Raphaelites can be said to be more than in all others antagonistic to the schools of painting which preceded them, it would be that indicated by this distinction,—­that the new school is one which in all cases places truth before beauty, while the old esteems beauty above truth.  The tendency of the one is towards a severe and truth-seeking Art, one in all its characteristics essentially religious in the highest sense of the term, holding truth dearer than all success in popular estimation, or than all attractions of external beauty, reverent, self-forgetting, and humble before Nature; that of the other is towards an Art Epicurean and atheistic, holding the truth as something to be used or neglected at its pleasure, and of no more value than falsehood which is equally beautiful,—­making Nature, indeed, something for weak men to lean on and for superstitious men