Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/514

506 lous instincts of truth, and in its very profuseness of giving,—filling its caskets with an unchoosing lavishness of pearl and pebble, rose and may-weed, all treasures alike to its newly opened eyes, all so beautiful that there can scarcely be choice among them.

To suppose that a revolution so complete as this could take place without a bitter opposition would be an hypothesis without any justification in the world's experience; for, be it in whatever sphere or form, when a revolution comes, it offends all that is conservative and reverential of tradition in the minds of men, and arouses an apparently inexplicable hostility, the bitterness of which is not at all proportionate to the interest felt by the individual in the subject of the reform, but to his constitutional antipathy to all reform, to all agitation. The conservative at heart hates the reformer because he agitates, not because he disturbs him personally. This is clearly seen in the hostility with which the new Art has been met in England, where conservatism has built its strongest batteries in the way of invading reform. For the moment, the English mind, bending in a surprised deference to the stormy assault of the enthusiasts of the new school, partly carried away by its characteristic admiration of the heroism of their attack and the fiery eloquence of their champion, Ruskin, and perhaps not quite assured of its final effect, forgets to unmask its terrible artillery. But to upset the almost immovable English conservatism, to teach the nation new ways of thought and feeling, in a generation! Cromwell could not do it; and this wave of reform that now surges up against those prejudices, more immovable than the white cliffs of Albion, will break and mingle with the heaving sea again, as did that of the republicanism of the Commonwealth, whose Protector never sat in his seat of government more firmly than Ruskin now holds the protectorate of Art in England. When political reform moved off to American wildernesses for the life it could not preserve in England, it but marked the course reform in Art must follow. The apparent ascendency which it has obtained over the old system will as certainly turn out to be temporary as there is logic in history; because an Art, like a political system, to govern a nation, must be in accordance with its character as a nation, must, in fact, be the outgrowth of it. The only unfailing line of kings and protectors is the people; with them is no interregnum; and when the English people become fitted by intellectual and moral progress to be protectors of a new and living Art, it will return to them just as surely as republicanism will one day return from its exile,

The philosophic Art will find a soil free from Art-prejudices and open to all seeds of truth; it will find quiet and liberty to grow, not without enemies or struggles, but with no enemies that threaten its safety, nor struggles greater than will strengthen it. The appreciation and frank acceptance it has met on its first appearance here, the number of earnest and intelligent adherents it has already found, are more than its warmest friends hoped for so soon. But in England, while its appreciating admirers will remain adherents to its principles, it will pass out of existence as an independent form of Art, and the elements of good in it will mingle with the Art of the nation, as a leaven of non-conformity and radicalism, breeding agitations enough to keep stagnation away and to secure a steady and irresistible progress. Its truest devotees will remain in principle what they are, losing gradually the external characteristics of the school as it is now known,—while the great mass of its disciples, unthinking, impulsive, will sink back into the ranks of the old school, carrying with them the strength they have acquired by the severe training of the system, so that the whole of English Art will be the better for Pre-Raphaelitism. But with Ruskin's influence ceases the Commonwealth of Art; for Ruskin governs, not represents, English feeling,—governs with a tyranny as absolute, an authority as unquestioned, as did Oliver Cromwell.

Of the men now enlisted in the reform, few are of very great value individually. Millais will probably be the first important recusant. He is a man of quick growth, and his day of power is already past; the reaction will find in him an ally of name, but he has no real great-