Nature may be the rule of the artist, but it is not an easy thing to attain to an understanding of the truth of Nature. The actual is not always the real. Literal truth is not always exact truth; and the seeming truth, which is what Art must often represent, is very different from the absolute truth. And here there has been much stumbling in Pre-Raphaelitism, and there is likelihood of fall; likelihood of the actual being mistaken for the real, the show for the essence. It is, indeed, apparently, a tendency toward this error which has deprived most of the best pictures of the Pre-Raphaelites of the quality of breadth, a quality which Nature usually preserves in herself, which in painting takes the place of harmony in music, and which only the greatest painters have acquired.
But if Pre-Raphaelitism be true, not to the letter, but to the spirit of its principles,—if its artists remain unspoiled by flattery and success,—if they avoid mannerisms, conceits, and the affectations of originality,—if they can keep religious faith undimmed by the "world's slow stain"; then we may expect from the school such works of painting as have not been seen in past times,—works which shall be the forerunners of a new period of Art, and shall show what undreamed conquests yet lie open before it,—works which shall take us into regions of yet undiscovered beauty, and reveal to us more and more of the exhaustless love of God.
The Rommany Girl.
The sun goes down, and with him takes
The coarseness of my poor attire;
The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame
Of gypsy beauty blazes higher.
Pale northern girls! you scorn our race;
You captives of your air-tight halls,
Wear out in-doors your sickly days,
But leave us the horizon walls.
And if I take you, dames, to task,
And say it frankly without guile,
Then you are gypsies in a mask,
And I the lady all the while.
If, on the heath, under the moon,
I court and play with paler blood,
Me false to mine dare whisper none,—
One sallow horseman knows me good.
Go, keep your cheek's rose from the rain,
For teeth and hair with shopmen deal;
My swarthy tint is in the grain,
The rocks and forest know it real.
