Meeting some of today's teenagers in the place where I spent my adolescence, I find myself admiring their self-discipline and generosity while regretting the apparent muting of youthful challenge and confrontation.

BBC: Should we despair at the kids of today?

These include William Holman Hunt's beautiful "The Eve of Saint Agnes" (after Keats's poem) and the very early "Arming of a Knight" chair decorated by William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (exhibited with a youthful self-caricature by Edward Burne-Jones in which he depicts himself admiring that chair while seated on it).

WSJ: Victorian Avant-Garde | Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design | National Gallery of Art | By Barrymore Laurence Scherer