Pre-Raphaelites, Mr. Hunt will remain the most popular.  He is artistically the scapegoat of that great movement which gave a new impulse to English art, a scapegoat sent out to wander by the dead seas of popularity.  I once knew a learned German who regretted that none of his countrymen could paint ‘Alpine scenery’ as Mr. Hunt has done in the ‘Scapegoat’!  Yes, he has a message for every one, for my German friend, for Sir William Richmond, and myself.  He is a missing link between art and popularity.  He symbolises the evangelical attitude of those who would go to German Reed’s and the Egyptian Hall, but would not attend a theatre.  After all, it was a gracious attitude, because it is that of mothers who aged more beautifully, I think, than the ladies of a later generation which admired Whistler or Burne-Jones and regularly attended the Lyceum.  When modern art, the brilliant art of the ’sixties, was strictly excluded from English homes except in black and white magazines, engravings from the ‘Finding of Christ in the Temple’ and the ‘Light of the World’ were allowed to grace the parlour along with ’Bolton Abbey,’ the ‘Stag at Bay,’ and ‘Blucher meeting Wellington.’  You see them now only in Pimlico and St. John’s Wood.  A friend of mine said he could never look at the picture of ‘Blucher meeting Wellington’ without blushing. . . .  Like a good knight and true, Sir William Richmond, another Bedivere, has brandished Excalibur in the form of a catalogue for Mr. Hunt’s pictures.  He offers the jewels for our inspection; they make a brave show; they are genuine; they are intrinsic, but you remember others of finer water, Bronzino-like portraits of Mr. Andrew Lang and Bismarck and many others.  Now, you should never recollect anything during the enjoyment of a complete work of art.

Every one knows the view from Richmond, I should say of Richmond; it is almost my own . . .  Far off Sir Bedivere sees Lyonesse submerged; Camelot-at-Sea has capitulated after a second siege to stronger forces.  The new Moonet is high in the heaven and a dim Turner-like haze has begun to obscure the landscape and soften the outlines.  Under cover of the mist the hosts of Mordred MacColl, en-Tate with victory, are hunting the steer in the New English Forest.  Far off the enchanter Burne-Jones is sleeping quietly in Broceliande (I cannot bear to call it Rottingdean).  Hark, the hunt, (not the Holman Hunt) is up in Caledon (Glasgow); they have started the shy wilson steer:  they have wound the hornel; the lords of the International, who love not Mordred overmuch, are galloping nearer and nearer.  Sir Bedivere can see their insolent pencils waving black and white flags:  and the game-keepers and beaters (critics) chant in low vulgar tones: 

   When we came out of Glasgow town
   There was really nothing at all to see
   Except Legros and Professor Brown,
   But now there is Guthrie and Lavery.