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effect; W. Havell, who had a great love for Cumberland scenery, was broad, bold, and highly finished in style, taking out his high lights for future glazing by bread, handkerchief, and clean brush.

Heaphy, whom Reynolds praised, delighted in nightcellar, fish-market, and low scenes.

Cristall, whose execution was broad, bold, and slight, drew classic figures, Virgilian peasants, and cottage groups in a large manner; but Girtin surpassed them all in depth, breadth, and harmony.

Canaletti for touch, and Rubens for colours, were Girtin's chief models. He first introduced the system of drawing upon lined rough double cartridge paper (purchased at a shop at Charing-cross); by this means he got force and freedom, and avoided "the spotty, glittering glare" of the ordinary white paper. His paper became so fashionable that collectors even liked to see across their Girtin drawings the mark of where the paper had been hung to dry across a string. He first drew in his work with a reed pen, but latterly, to avoid hardness and edginess, he only blotted in the general form with Indian ink. His enemies said he used the architect's rule too much, as in his copies of Canaletti, and that his effects were tricks; but this is absurd, for he owed his success to his free hand and sure eye. He used, too, a richer palette than his contemporaries, except Turner; and made water-colour painting more resemble oil.

"Whoever inspected his palette," says an art-critic, "would find it covered with a greater variety of tints than almost any of his contemporaries employed. Mr. Moore was his first patron, and with him he went a

tour into Scotland. The prospects he saw in that country gave that wildness of imagery to the scenery of his drawings by which they are so pre-eminently distinguished. He also went with Mr. Moore to Peterborough, Lichfield, and Lincoln; and indeed, to many other places remarkable for their rich scenery, either in nature or architecture. That gentleman had a drawing that Girtin made of Exeter Cathedral, which was principally coloured on the spot where it was drawn; for he was so uncommonly indefatigable, that when he had made a sketch of any place, he never wished to quit it until he had given it all the proper tints.

The best pictures of Girtin's now in the possession of his son at Islington are "Stoke Pogis Church," "A Mill in Essex" (splendid in tone and breadth, which occasionally degenerates to carelessness), "Kirkstall," "Rivaulx," "Ouse Bridge, York." Mr. Chambers Hall had gone to try and purchase some of Mr. Jackson, when in the next room he overheard him rating Lord Essex for insolently coming to him and treating him with aristocratic pride as a mere vendor of pictures. After this, of course Mr. Hall despaired of prevailing on him to part with any of the pictures, but, to his astonishment, Mr. Jackson presented him with them all.

The artist of Turner's admiration, after Girtin, was Reynolds. He drew his purse to buy Sir Joshua's palette to present to Shee. "His admiration for Girtin took a less tangible form," says a certain sneerer.* "In a fit of generosity he talked of erecting a monuMr. Peter Cunningham.

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ment to mark the grave of his friend and rival in Covent-garden churchyard; but when the amount was named a few shillings over ten pounds-he shrugged his shoulders, and rested satisfied with the bare intention. The grave, we are sorry to say, is still unmarked; a headstone to Girtin would be a graceful tribute from either the Old or the New Water-colour Society." Now all this is just an instance of the way men write when they are determined to blame. A tombstone was put up to Girtin, but whether by Turner or not, I do not know. A friend of mine saw it, made a sketch of it, and warned the sexton of its precarious state. It has now been removed.

CHAPTER VIII.

TURNER, THE DRAWING-MASTER.

THERE are old people still living who remember Turner in 1795 or 1796-that is to say, when he was twenty or twenty-one, and taught drawing in London, at Hadley (Herts), and at other places. One of them writes to me, and says-" He was eccentric, but kind and amusing." He was too reserved, and too tonguetied to be able to teach what he knew, even if he had cared to disclose his hard-earned secrets. He would hate the work, though it did bring some ten shillings a lesson. His ambition would feel impatient of amateurs. He would not flatter like the ordinary time-server who teaches. He would be silent and rough, and leave the puzzled pupils pretty well alone while he thought over some sketch of his own. Indeed, Turner always held that those who could not understand a hint would not understand a volume of advice. Blake, one of his pupils, complained of being left quite alone, and one day, indignant at his master's heedlessness of some commissions for drawings he had obtained for him, went and rubbed out the addresses he had already given, and so cancelled the orders. I have no doubt Turner's disregard of the commissions

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meant something, and that he took the cancelling quietly and as a matter of course.

But now we are discussing Turner's life as a drawing-master, let us consider the nature of the art he taught, and the various improvements he introduced into that art.

On the interesting question of Turner's method of water-colour painting, our greatest authority, Mr. Ruskin, says: "The large early drawings of Turner were sponged without friction, or were finished piece by piece on white paper; as he advanced he laid the chief masses first in broad tints, never effacing anything, but working the details over these broad tints. While still wet, he brought out the soft lights with the point of a brush; the brighter ones with the end of a stick, often, too, driving the wet colour in a darker line to the edge of the light, in order to represent the outlines of hills.

"His touches were all clear, firm, and unalterable, one over the other: friction he used only now and then, to represent the grit of stone or the fretted pile of moss; the finer lights he often left from the first, even the minutest light, working round and up to them, not taking them out as weaker men would have done. He would draw the dark outlines by putting more water to wet brushes, and driving the colour to the edge to dry there, firm and dark. He would draw the broken edges of clouds with a quiver of the brush, then round the vapour by laying on a little more colour into parts not wet, and lastly dash in warm touches of light when dry on the outside edges. "In his advanced stage, and in finished drawings,