"Tbe )13trtator," alp 150, 1852.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION
Among the subjects of invention two stand pre-eminently forth as something more than inventions in the bare current acceptation of the term—as distinct creations: we mean Mr. Millais's work, "A Huguenot on St. Bartholemew's Day refusing to shelter himself from danger by wearing the Roman Catholic badge," and Mr. Hunt's " Hireling Shepherd." It would be superfluous to say that these two works are produced on the " Pre-Raphaelite " principle of faithful unswerving truth—a truth which recognises no degrees of less and more—were it not that we conceive this fact to be the key to their altogether peculiar impressiveness. The incident of Mr. Millais's work —which is so simple and intelligible as to need no explanation beyond what its title supplies—is founded on the Duc do Guise's order that "each good Catholic should bind a strip of white linen round his arm" as a badge to be known by. It is not, however, strictly a strip of white linen which the lady attempts to tie round her lover's arm, but a silk kerchief of her own; for time presses, the hour of danger is come, and the first substitute at hand must serve. Her whole soul, which can see nothing but him in the world, looks through her eyes into his with an appealing trust and love;—surely she must prevail He, inexorably as duty, calmly, with the very arm that clasps her to his breast, draws the kerchief asunder: and the poor rose in her bosom falls and breaks with the closeness of that last embrace. . . . The only objection which prolonged and searching contemplation has suggested to us is that the male figure's leg appears—we are not certain that it is—too uniform in rounding.
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