was specially excepted from the pictures that they might choose.

An early writer on Turner says:

"It has often been asked where, when, and how Turner acquired such knowledge of the sea and of ships? and the question may be answered by stating that in his travels he always mingled with humble and practical men; for whether journeying by sea or land, he never parted with a penny without looking at it twice, and was in the habit of travelling by the most economical conveyance, as well as putting up at the most cheap houses; and a good deal of his knowledge of seamanship was picked up during his trips to the North, to which he always went by a collier. Once he spent a whole summer in drifting about the Thames, for he was fond of the water; and at the time of his death, Mr. Booth's' boat was moored off Battersea Bridge. Lord Egremont used to assert that Turner had a yacht; but we cannot ascertain this to be the case.'

"In the year 1839," says Mr. Lupton, "J. M. W. Turner presented the public with the sight of that highly-esteemed picture, the 'Téméraire being towed to her last Berth,' the beauty and splendour of which were perhaps somewhat heightened by an occurrence which not unfrequently happens to pictures that are placed in juxtaposition during the arranging or hanging of the pictures for public exhibition.

"The picture of the Téméraire' was placed satisfactorily to Mr. Turner, and immediately over it was a picture by Geddes, A.R.A.-'A Lady and Children.' Geddes was delighted with the splendour

and brilliancy of Turner's picture; but at the same time saw at a glance that its splendour and brilliancy would entirely attract the spectator's attention from his own picture above, and that he must do something to make his picture more attractive, and share in the vividness or brilliancy of colour with Turner's picture beneath. So he resolved to repaint the floor of his picture, which was a plain, quiet colour, and make it more attractive to the spectator's eye; accordingly he resolved to paint in a showy Turkey carpet. To accomplish this, he first painted the whole ground of his picture with a flat, bright tint of vermilion, as a groundwork for the pattern of the carpet to be painted, and then returned to an adjoining room to complete another picture he was painting on before the opening of the Exhibition. Turner was also in an adjoining room, touching upon or varnishing another of his pictures; after awhile, he returned to look at his 'Téméraire,' when, in an instant, his eyes were attracted up to this new mass of bright vermilion of Geddes's picture. He was overheard to exclaim, 'Oh, oh! Mr. Geddes!' and immediately ran for his palette and brushes from an adjoining room where he was painting. Laying hold of his palette knife, he first took a sly look at Mr. Geddes's picture, then at his own: taking his palette knife, charged full of vermilion, he passed it right across his picture; then stepping back, with another sly look at both pictures, and another palette knife charged with orange colour, then another charged with yellow, and so on, until he was satisfied that he had brought his picture up to the necessary brilliancy

to contend with the bright vermilion ground above him in Mr. Geddes's picture.

“Turner, returning the next day to look at his picture, was somewhat surprised to find that the bright vermilion ground of Geddes's picture above his Téméraire,' and which he had taken so much pains to paint down, had been turned into a rich, quiet (comparatively speaking) sober-coloured Turkey carpet."

CHAPTER XXI.

TURNER'S ART LIFE-CONCLUDED.

IN 1840 Turner painted "Bacchus and Ariadne," a variation of the grand old Titian theme. Turner has omitted the sail of the vessel of Theseus, who, having slain the Minotaur, deserts Ariadne at Naxos. There is a city on a height, and a river below.

The same year Turner produced "Venice-the Bridge of Sighs," the celebrated bridge that connects the Doge's palace with the State prison, and which was built in 1589; also "Venice from the Giudecca," a light and sunny picture; and, inaddition, the "New Moon," a seaport at sunset, with sands at low water, and a steamer in the distance.

In 1842 Turner painted "Peace-the Burial of the Body of Sir David Wilkie.” This excellent painter had died the June previous off Gibraltar, as he was returning from the East in the Oriental steamer. Wilkie had come to England from Fifeshire in 1805. The old rivalry was now forgotten in regret at his death. In the distance of the picture are the rocketsignals rising from the signal-peak at Gibraltar.

In 1842 Turner also exhibited "War-the Exile and the Rock Limpet;" a picture representing Napo

leon on the shore of St. Helena at sunset, watching a solitary shell. The strange motto showed the eccentric and super-subtle meaning of the painter,

"Ah! thy tent-formed shell is like

A soldier's nightly bivouac alone,

Amidst a sea of blood!

But you can join your comrades."

Owing to the wilfully eccentric reflections, Napoleon looks as if he was standing on stilts.

This was the year, too, of the "Snow StormSteamboat off a Harbour's Mouth making Signals; Shallow Water; going by the Lead." The painter was himself in this storm, in the Ariel steamer, off Harwich. Turner was much hurt at the severity of the criticism.

In 1843 Turner, tired now of plain sober truth, or determined to puzzle and astonish by prismatic experiments a public that would not buy his pictures and did not comprehend his genius, launched out into some of his wildest dreams. He exhibited "Shade and Darkness, or the Evening of the Deluge;" "Light and Colour, or the Morning of the Deluge" (he was very fond of this parallelism of subjects); and the "Opening of the Walhalla, 1842" (honour to King Ludwig of Bavaria!). The Walhalla, a Doric temple, erected on a hill on the left bank of the Danube, near Regensburg, was built by Leo von Klenze, and opened in October, 1842. The interior contains two hundred marble busts of eminent Germans. The topography of the picture is full of errors. It is probably painted, with alterations, from a bad engraving. Turner, delighted with