'Ancilla Domini,' the first plate of the fifth volume of Modern Painters; -consider, I repeat, the shock to the feelings of all these delicately minded persons, on being asked to conceive a Virgin waking from her sleep on a pallet bed, in a plain room, startled by sudden words and ghostly presence which she does not comprehend, and casting in her mind what manner of Salutation this should be.

Again, consider, with respect to the second picture, how the learned possessors of works of established reputation by the ancient masters, classically catalogued as landscapes with figures;' and who held it for eternal, artistic law that such pictures should either consist of a rock, with a Spanish chestnut growing out of the side of it, and three banditti in helmets and big feathers on the top, or else of a Corinthian temple, built beside an arm of the sea; with the Queen of Sheba beneath, preparing for embarkation to visit Solomon,-the whole properly toned down with amber varnish:--imagine the first consternation, and final wrath, of these cognoscenti, at being asked to contemplate, deliberately, and to the last rent of her ragged gown, and for principal object in a finished picture, a vagrant who ought at once to have been sent to the workhouse; and some really green grass and blue flowers, as they actually may any day be seen on an English common-side.

And finally, let us imagine, if imagination fail us not, the far more wide and weighty indignation of the public, accustomed always to see its paintings of marriages elaborated in Christian propriety and splendour; with a bishop officiating, assisted by a dean and an archdeacon; the modesty of the bride expressed by a veil of the most expensive Valenciennes, and the robes of the bridesmaids designed by the perfectest of Parisian artists, and looped up with stuffed robins or other such tender rarities;-think with what sense of hitherto unheard-of impropriety, the British public must have received a picture of a marriage, in which the bride was only crowned with flowers,at which the bridesmaids danced barefoot,-and in which nothing was known, or even conjecturable, respecting the bridegroom, but his love!

Such being the manifestly opponent and agonistic temper of these three pictures (and admitting, which I will crave the reader to do for the nonce, their real worth and power to be considerable), it surely becomes a matter of no little interest to see what spirit it is that they have in common, which, recognised as revolutionary in the minds of the young artists themselves, caused them, with more or less of firmness, to constitute themselves into a society, partly monastic, partly predicatory, called 'Pre-Raphaelite :' and also recognised as such, with indignation, by the public, caused the youthfully didactic society to be regarded with various degrees of contempt, passing into anger (as of offended personal dignity), and embittered farther, among certain classes of persons, even into a kind of instinctive abhorrence. VOL. IV. No. 21. 3 P

I believe the reader will discover, on reflection, that there is really only one quite common and sympathetic impulse shown in these three works, otherwise so distinct in aim and execution. And this fraternal link he will, if careful in reflection, discover to be an effort to represent, so far as in these youths lay either the choice or the power, things as they are, or were, or may be, instead of, according to the practice of their instructors and the wishes of their public, things as they are not, never were, and never can be: this effort being founded deeply on a conviction that it is at first better, and finally more pleasing, for human minds to contemplate things as they are, than as they are not.

Thus, Mr. Rossetti, in this and subsequent works of the kind, thought it better for himself and his public to make some effort towards a real notion of what actually did happen in the carpenter's cottage at Nazareth, giving rise to the subsequent traditions delivered in the Gospels, than merely to produce a variety in the pattern of Virgin, pattern of Virgin's gown, and pattern of Virgin's house, which had been set by the jewellers of the fifteenth century.

Similarly, Mr. Millais, in this and other works of the kind, thought it desirable rather to paint such grass and foliage as he saw in Kent, Surrey, and other solidly accessible English counties, than to imitate even the most Elysian fields enamelled by Claude, or the gloomiest branches of Hades forest rent by Salvator: and yet more, to manifest his own strong personal feeling that the humanity, no less than the herbage, near us and around, was that which it was the painter's duty first to portray; and that, if Wordsworth were indeed right in feeling that the meanest flower that blows can give,-much more, for any kindly heart it should be true that the meanest tramp that walks can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.'

And if at first-or even always to careless sight-the third of these pictures seem opposite to the two others in the very point of choice, between what is and what is not; insomuch that while they with all their strength avouch realities, this with simplest confession dwells upon a dream,—yet in this very separation from them it sums their power and seals their brotherhood; reaching beyond them to the more perfect truth of things, not only that once were,-not only that now are, but which are the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;-the love, by whose ordaining the world itself and all that dwell therein, live, and move, and have their being; by which the Morning stars rejoice in their courses-in which the virgins of deathless Israel rejoice in the dance-and in whose constancy the Giver of light to stars, and love to man, Himself is glad in the creatures of His hand,-day by new day proclaiming to His Church of all the ages, 'As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy Lord rejoice over thee.'

Such, the reader will find, if he cares to learn it, is indeed the purport and effort of these three designs-so far as, by youthful hands and in a time of trouble and rebuke, such effort could be brought to good end. Of their visible weaknesses, with the best justice I may,of their veritable merits with the best insight I may, and of the farther history of the school which these masters founded, I hope to be permitted to speak more under the branches that do not remember their green felicity;' adding a corollary or two respecting the other pieces of art above named as having taken part in the tenor of my country hours of idleness.

(To be continued.)

JOHN RUSKIN.

May I in the meantime recommend any reader interested in these matters to obtain for himself such photographic representation as may be easily acquirable of the tomb of Ilaria? It is in the north transept of the Cathedral of Lucca; and is certainly the most beautiful work existing by the master who wrought it,-Jacop della Quercia.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE REVIVAL OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE.

CONCLUSION.

6

It is time that the half-promised sequel to an article which appeared in a previous number of this Review' should be prepared for publication. The paper in question had for its title the Revival of Greek Independence,' and it closed with the battle of Navarino and the departure from Constantinople of the three ambassadors whom that event more immediately affected. What remains for narration in this article is the series of proceedings relative to that country which occurred between the catastrophe of Navarino and the establishment of Hellenic territory as it still exists, including a brief recurrence to some autecedent points.

The instructions under which I left England in the autumn of 1825 related chiefly to Russia, and more particularly, as the reader already knows, to the question of Greece. Their common object, in so far as it appeared capable of treatment at the time, was the restoration of peace either disturbed or threatened in the Levant. Peace in that quarter was disturbed by the Greek insurrection, and endangered to a further extent by certain claims of Russia offensive to Turkey. Insuperable obstacles, for the most part chargeable on weather, prevented my reaching Constantinople before the 27th of February, 1826. Other instructions, occasioned by the death of the Emperor Alexander and the Duke of Wellington's embassy, awaited me there. A later batch, under dates of the 10th and 14th of February, arrived on the 9th of March. These last instructions were dictated by an apprehension of change in the imperial policy at St. Petersburg, and a consequent danger of impending hostilities. They imposed upon me the duty of acting without delay at the Porte, and pressing the admonitions of the Government with open and somewhat peremptory vehemence on the Sultan and his Ministers.

This may be effectively illustrated by a few words from the authentic correspondence of the time. I was ordered to ask an audience of the Reis Effendi immediately on the receipt of the despatch dated the 10th of February, and to urge him in the most strenuous manner to obtain from the Divan an instant declaration

1 Nineteenth Century, August 1878.

of their readiness to treat for an accommodation with the Greeks upon any reasonable basis which the Ottoman Government might suggest.'

6

I was to send the declaration, if it could be obtained, with as little delay as possible, to the Duke of Wellington at St. Petersburg, and, if the Divan hesitated, to tell the Reis Effendi that the Porte was not to reckon upon Great Britain as an ally in a war undertaken against the Porte by Russia for the protection of the Greeks.'

Another important subject occupied several pages of the same despatch, namely, the intelligence, communicated to Mr. Canning by Count Lieven, the Russian ambassador in London, of a plan entertained by the Pasha of Egypt and the Porte for transferring the Christian population of the Morea to the banks of the Nile, and replacing them by a Mussulman population from the same quarter. 'Great Britain,' says the instruction, will not permit the execution of a system of depopulation which exceeds the permitted violences of war, and transgresses the conventional restraints of civilisation.'

This I was ordered to declare to the Porte in the most distinct terms,' provided there was reason to believe that the intelligence in question derived sufficient confirmation either from reliable sources or from positive facts.

The communications which ensued between the British Embassy and the Ottoman Minister were anything but satisfactory. The Porte, in reply to every urgent inquiry, assumed an air of indignant innocence, but shrank at the same time from giving a clear unquestionable denial of the charge. Ibrahim Pasha conducted his operations in Greece with that degree of unsparing cruelty which justified the worst suspicions, but no overt act was traced to him with the effect of proving that he had adopted the alleged plan.

Much more, say a volume, might be written to explain in full the discussions and transactions of the year now treated of; but articles of a review have their allotted, though somewhat elastic, limits, and it is time to go forward instead of lingering to no good purpose over a bygone period.

It is right, nevertheless, to premise that the negotiations, or rather the efforts to produce them, conducted by one or more of the embassies, covered a space of twenty-one months, including the suppression of the Janissaries and the Turco-Russian conference at Ackerman, on the conclusion of which M. de Ribeaupierre arrived at Constantinople as envoy, and his appearance in this character seemed to announce the restoration of a durable peace between the Czar and the Sultan. The limited functions of chargé d'affaires had been previously exercised by Monsieur Minciacky, who left no reason to doubt his having given what little support his position allowed to the steps I had to take at the Porte in obedience to my instructions.

The Greeks meanwhile, impelled by a sense of increased weakness,