LEIGHTON HOUSE 
Academy in those days—as there is apt to be more or less, in the 
atmosphere of every academic body—that had a deadening effect. 
Besides which, Holman-Hunt, Madox Brown, and Rossetti, remained oan 
sternly outside—Burne-Jones—a sort of younger son of the Brother- 
hood—though elected an associate—an honour, I believe, not of 
his secking—only exhibited there once, and sent his best work 
elsewhere. And after entering the Academy, Millais himself— 
who certainly possessed genius, and will live when most of us are 
forgotten—in sundry notable portraits, in ‘‘The Boyhood of 
Raleigh,” and other examples of his exuberant middle period— 
examples that are satisfying till compared with his youthful efforts 
—broke entirely away from Pre-Raphaelite principles. A certain 
devolution from them was to be expected—and for some years he 
betrayed no decline in painting-power—rather the reverse—but 
his work ceased to show the intensity of intellectual vision—the 
emotional and dramatic force, and the passionate admiration for, 
and close loving study of, nature, of ‘‘ The Huguenot ” and similar 
subjects, while it lacked the subtle meanings—carried through 
every inch of the canvas—to be found in that noblest of British 
pictures, ‘‘ The Blind Girl,” well worth a pilgrimage to Birmingham 
to see ! 
These pictures, and others by the Brotherhood, though they 
did not lead to a revolution in Art—had effected what sincerity 
and earnestness will more or less always effect in the most con- 
servative society. Before Frederick Leighton appeared upon the 
scene—Pre- -Raphaelitism had sent a revivifying breath of fresh 
air through the closed and musty chambers of Burlington House 
—and had blown away the cobwebs of a century of conventional 
art; and though this had passed, and to some extent the dust had 
settled again—yet the windows were left open for the admission of 
a healthy realism, and later, of a broad and sane impressionism— 
using the word for the moment in the narrow sense in which it is 
usually applied. Both of these had originated in this country, 
and only came back to us from France ; for if it be doubtful how 
far our own Constable inspired the great French landscapists and 
the French nature school—none will deny that Turner was the 
first great Impressionist. Mr. Charles J. Holmes, perhaps the 
chief authority on Constable, thinks that his influence on French 
Art has been exaggerated, and that the Impressionists when they 
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