smaller social features of the day-such as the prodigious company at Ranelagh, or the crowds who flock to hear Mr. Saville Cary lecture on mimicry at Marylebone Gardens, or to hear the singing and see the fireworks at the same popular suburban place of entertainment.

Or, as our barber lives close to Covent Garden Theatre, and in a lane that runs over nightly with the sedan-chairs of "the quality" who come to see Garrick play Abel Drugger in the Alchemyst, he discusses the merit of Bannister, the witty comedian; or, remembering his long pilgrimage up from Devonshire, he lifts up his eyes at reading in the Morning Chronicle the horrible audacity of seven highwaymen, who one night this year actually stopped the Norwich stage-coach in Epping Forest, and though the guard (eventually killed) shot three of them dead, persevered till they stopped the horses and robbed all the passengers.

And these passengers, you must imagine, reader! the ladies in high-heeled shoes, looped-up gowns, long gloves, lace stomachers, small ruffles, scanty hoops, short aprons, low gowns, and with hair piled up in front into powdered toupées, as you see in Reynolds' portraits, and with two or three large curls on each side.

The gentlemen, if dandies, or "maccaronis," wore very small hats on enormous snowy mountains of toupées, short pig-tails, and striped silk knee-breeches.

But before I leave this social panorama of 1775, the year of Turner's birth, I would first mention the deaths of two old men, one rich, and one poor, in this

year, that may show how closely allied 1775 was with 1675, and how far back the memory of an old man living eighty-six years ago could take us.

In 1775 died at a village, in the North of England, a poor man, named Peter Gordon. He was one hundred and thirty-two years old, and was born in Charles I.'s time.

Reckoning Oliver Cromwell, he had lived under ten kings; and remembered, as a boy, being sent to the forest to cut wood for spears during the Civil Wars.

The same year, following suit to this Lazarus, died also Dives, one of the old Queen Anne worthies, the Earl Bathurst-a man who had been the friend of Pope, and Sterne, and Swift, of Congreve, Vanbrugh, Prior, Rowe, Addison, Arbuthnot, and Gay; a happy, rich man, who had in his time opposed Sir Robert Walpole, attacked the South Sea bubble, and denounced lotteries.

So that we see that it was possible that old Turner might have talked to men who had seen Ben Jonson, and cheered Oliver Cromwell on his way to scour out the factious Parliament; while if the earl had ever deigned to come to Maiden-lane to be shaved (not the most probable thing), the barber could have heard first-hand of the wit of Swift, the humour of Addison, and the metrical bile of little crooked Pope.

But although the barber was as yet probably sublimely indifferent to Fame, and to the great future already dawning for his son, it is necessary for us to consider the position of English art at the period of the Turner avatar.

West and Reynolds, Wilson and Gainsborough, were the chief planets of the art-heavens at this time. Reynolds, just elected into the Florence Academy, holds great levees of the poor wise, the rich foolish, the poor foolish, and the rich wise, at his house in Leicestersquare. Gainsborough has left Bath (1774), and come to what was formerly the Duke of Schomberg's house in Pall Mall, where he is becoming a dangerous rival to Reynolds. As for poor Wilson, he is starving in I know not what garret, neglected by every one but kind Paul Sandby, and a few old friends who forgive his sour manner and his homely honest bluntness. Lawrence, the hotel-keeper's son at Bristol, though still a child, is already earning a local fame by drawing portraits and reciting verses.

As for Hogarth, he has disappeared from Leicestersquare these eleven years; Hayman, his old friend, is dying, and far away on the Continent. Turner's future models and competitors are also dead. Canaletti seven summers, and Claude Lorraine, his special predecessor and enemy, a full century all but a few years.

Nor must I forget that high up in the London firmament shines West, the son of a Philadelphia Quaker, who has got introduced into Court, and is painting a series of classical subjects for King George; supplying him too, at the same time, with hints and advice about the foolish and unlucky American War, that now begins to all but engross the not very capacious royal brain; already the Court favourite-the insipid, quietly vain Court painter-is Director of the Society of Artists.

38

DR. JOHNSON AND FRIENDS.

Then as to the water-colour artists: Turner's friendly rival, Girtin, is just born; Cozens is already growing up; Paul Sandby (born 1732) is a wellknown painter, and a fashionable drawing-master. Hearne too, his successor (born 1744), is in the West Indies, acting officially as draughtsman to Sir Ralph Payne.

Turner's other rivals, predecessors, and contemporaries, I shall mention later in my book.

Let us now, in conclusion, review the condition of literary London in 1775-the year of Turner's birth. There is Dr. Johnson (Boswell is away in Scotland) storming about the Ossian controversy; and like a true old Tory, declaring that the Americans are "a race of convicts." Richardson, Shenstone, Young, Churchill, Sterne, Akenside, Gray, and Smollett are all dead; and Goldsmith passed away a year ago.

But Burke is alive, and so are Bishop Percy and Gibbon, while Sheridan has been just bringing out, rather unsuccessfully too, his Rivals. The future poetry of the Lake school was as yet dormant, though Thomson had already shown that simple English scenes could be treated classically, and without any loss of dignity. Far away too, in an obscure part of Scotland, Burns is fast growing up to sing of love, and homely pleasures and cares, with a true inspiration that proved that there were other models for amatory and pastoral poets than Theocritus and Ovid. Such was the stage so carefully prepared for the genius who had arisen.

And what was the London of Turner's boyhood like? Imagine retired citizens living in countrified Isling

ton, and hackney sedan-chairs moored in rows round Covent-garden.

Imagine fields everywhere; beyond Portland Chapel and the New Road, turnstiles, meadows, and teagardens, and taverns; a gallows on Kennington Common; hayricks in Osnaburg-street; Cavendishsquare with a dwarf brick wall round it, and in Harley-street, fields, where Whitefield preached. Behind Russell-street, on the north-west, was a farm, surrounded by fields and straggling houses, where (1773 and later) lived two old maids, named Capper, one of whom, mounted, and in a riding habit and man's hat, delighted to canter about, and with a pair of huge sheers cut the strings of truant and trespassing boys' kites; while the other sister would seize the clothes of boys who were bathing on the premises.

Tottenham Court-road was the scene of an annual "gooseberry fair," where the Drury-lane actors planted their booths. At this time (1775 and after) many of the "quality" lived on the western side of High-street, Marylebone.

At this time, London was a dark, dirty, tortuous, noisy place; but then, once out of the shadow of St. Paul's, you were soon in the fields; so that while the city of this day was more snug and social than at present, you were sooner out in the fresher suburbs, and those smoky green fields that we now have to seek at Barnsbury, Kensington, or beyond Nottinghill, if our search is on the west side of London.

From the windows of the houses at the northern end of Newman-street, you could see over fields and hillocks to the garden wall of Middlesex Hospital.