especially, took infinite pains to secure minute exactness in his detail.  Ruskin wrote in enthusiastic praise of the colours of the gems on the mantle clasp in “The Light of the World,” and said that all the Academy critics and painters together could not have executed one of the nettle leaves at the bottom of the picture.  The lizards in the foreground of Millais’ “Ferdinand Lured by Ariel” (exhibited in 1850) were studied from life, and Scott makes merry over the shavings on the floor of the carpenter shop in the same artist’s “Christ in the House of his Parents,” a composition which was ferociously ridiculed by Dickens in “Household Words.”

The symbolism which is so pronounced a feature in “The Light of the World” is common to all the Pre-Raphaelite art.  It is a mediaeval note, and Rossetti learned it from Dante.  Symbolism runs through the “Divine Comedy” in such touches as the rush, emblem of humility, with which Vergil girds Dante for his journey through Purgatory; the constellation of four stars—­

  “Non viste mai fuor ch’ alla prima gente”—­

typifying the cardinal virtues; the three different coloured steps to the door of Purgatory;[6] and thickening into the elaborate apocalyptic allegory of the griffin and the car of the church, the eagle and the mystic tree in the last cantos of the “Purgatorio.”  In Hunt’s “Christ in the Shadow of Death,” the young carpenter’s son is stretching his arms after work, and his shadow, thrown upon the wall, is a prophecy of the crucifixion.  In Millais’ “Christ in the House of his Parents,” the boy has wounded the palm of his hand upon a nail, another foretokening of the crucifixion.  In Rossetti’s “Girlhood of Mary Virgin,” Joseph is training a vine along a piece of trellis in the shape of the cross; Mary is copying in embroidery a three-flowered white lily plant, growing in a flower-pot which stands upon a pile of books lettered with the names of the cardinal virtues.  The quaint little child angel who tends the plant is a portrait of a young sister of Thomas Woolner.  Similarly, in “Ecce Ancilla Domini,” the lily of the annunciation which Gabriel holds is repeated in the piece of needlework stretched upon the ’broidery frame at the foot of Mary’s bed.  In “Beata Beatrix” the white poppy brought by the dove is the symbol at once of chastity and of death; and the shadow upon the sun-dial marks the hour of Beatrice’s beatification.  Again, in “Dante’s Dream,” poppies strew the floor, emblems of sleep and death; an expiring lamp symbolises the extinction of life; and a white cloud borne away by angels is Beatrice’s departing soul.  Love stands by the couch in flame-coloured robes, fastened at the shoulder with the scallop shell which is the badge of pilgrimage.  In Millais’ “Lorenzo and Isabella” the salt-box is overturned upon the table, signifying that peace is broken between Isabella’s brothers and their table companion.  Doves are everywhere in Rossetti’s pictures,