like blood. Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided, lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits them; leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flying. Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty* ship as it labours amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its foaming flood with the sunlight,—and, cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous sea.

"I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any single work, I should choose this. Its daring conception-ideal in the highest sense of the word-is based on the purest truth, and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge of a life; its colour is absolutely perfect, not one "false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every square inch of canvass is a perfect composition; its drawing as accurate as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its tones as true as they are wonderful;† and the whole picture dedicated to the most sublime of subjects and impressions-(completing thus the perfect system of all truth, which we have shown to be formed by Turner's

* She is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. The near sea is encumbered with corpses.

The

There is a piece of tone of the same kind, equal in one part, but not so united, with the rest of the picture, in the storm scene illustrative of the Antiquary, (also by Turner)-a sunset light on polished sea. sea in the Lowestoffe is a piece of the cutting motion of shallow water, under storm, altogether in grey, which should be especially contrasted, as a piece of colour, to all of which we have nothing foreign to oppose but three slight, ill-considered and unsatisfactory subjects, from Basle, Lauffenbourg, and Thun.

works) the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable sea.”—Modern Painters, vol. i.

FAILURE OF TURNER'S VERY RECENT WORKS.

I

Mr. Ruskin, in his able work just quoted, has strictly limited the perfection of Turner's Works to the time of their first appearing on the walls of the Royal Academy. "No picture of Turner's (he adds,) is seen in perfection a month after it is painted. The Walhalla cracked before it had been eight days in the Academy rooms; the vermilions frequently lost lustre before the exhibition was over; and when all the colours began to get hard a year or two after they were painted, a painful deadness and opacity came over them, the white especially becoming lifeless, and many of the warmer passages settling into a hard valueless brown, even if the paint remained perfectly firm, which was far from being always the case. believe that in some measure these results are unavoidable; the colours being so peculiarly blended and mingled in Turner's present manner as almost to necessitate their irregular drying; but that they are not necessary to the extent in which they sometimes take place, is proved by the comparative safety of some of even the more brilliant works. Thus, the Old Téméraire is nearly safe in colour, and quite firm; while the Juliet and her Nurse is now the ghost of what it was; the Slaver shows no cracks, though it is chilled in some of the darker passages, while the Walhalla and several of the recent Venices cracked in the Royal Academy. It is true that the damage makes no further progress after the first year or two, and that even in its altered state the picture is always valuable, and records its intention; but it is bitterly to be regretted that so great a painter should not leave a single work by which in succeeding ages he might be estimated. The fact of his using means so imperfect, together with that of his utter neglect of the pictures in his own gallery, are a phenomenon in the human mind which appears to me utterly inexplicable; and both are without excuse. Fortunately, the drawings appear subject to no such deterioration. Many of them now are almost destroyed, but this has been, I think, always through ill treatment, or has been the case only with very early works. I have myself known no instance of a drawing properly protected, and not rashly exposed to light, suffering the slightest change. The great foes of Turner, as of all other great colourists especially, are the picture cleaner and the mounter."

Y

DECLINE OF TURNER'S HEALTH.

Turner was not an exhibitor at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1851, and was missed from its walls by all classes of connoisseurs. He was present, however, at the private view; where it seemed to Mr. Cunningham, and to others to whom he observed the circumstance, that he was breaking up fast— in short, that he would hardly live the year out. And so it proved.

DEATH OF TURNER.

In December, the Painter was taken very ill. A physician was sent for who knew his disease, and Turner watched with eagerness the eye of his friend, soliciting at the same time to know the worst. The worst was communicated to him. "Go down stairs," was the reply, "take a glass of sherry, and then look at me again." This was done, and led to the same result.

He had for a considerable time lodged at a river-side cottage at Chelsea, leaving his house in Queen Anne-street shut up. This cottage is situate upon the bank of the Thames beyond Chelsea old church, upon the road to Cremorne Gardens. His fondness for Thames scenery he evinced throughout his life. One of his earliest drawings was Lambeth Palace; he lived some time at Hammersmith, by the Thamesside; and subsequently at Twickenham.* This "ruling

passion" showed itself in his last days at Chelsea, where, during his last illness, he was wheeled in a chair to the window that he might look on the calm December sunshine which shed its golden hues upon the river and its craft.

This river-side abode has little in itself to recommend it to the lover of the picturesque: it is a plain-fronted house, with trellis-work and greenery about the door and windows, and a sort of prospect-gallery upon its roof. Here the great Painter had long enjoyed the prospect up the river, and watched those beautiful atmospheric changes which Turner could so ably transfer to canvas. The old Dutch-like character of Chelsea

* Mr. Alaric Watts tells us, that Turner is "still very well recollected at Twickenham, by more than one septuagenarian neighbour, as a parsimonious recluse, fond of fishing, who was named Blackbirdy by the boys, from his chasing them away from the blackbirds' nests, which were plentiful in his garden."

in the opposite direction may possibly have interested the painter, to whom a river-bank is generally a poetic locality.

Here he had long lived incog. He loved retirement, and with the peculiar dislike to having his address known, had, with his immense wealth, the feelings of the poorest bankrupt. He was unmarried, and left his house-keeper in Queen Anne-street; so that he himself engaged the apartmentsin the following manner. He liked the Chelsea lodgings, asked the price, found them cheap, and that was quite as much to his liking. But the landlady wanted a reference. "I will buy your house outright, my good woman," was the reply, somewhat angrily. Then an agreement was wanted, met by an exhibition of bank-notes and sovereigns, and an offer to pay in advance, an offer which was quite satisfactory. The painter's difficulties were not, however, yet over. The landlady wanted her lodger's name, "in case any gentleman should call." This was a worse dilemma. 66 Name, name," he muttered to himself in his usual gruff manner. "What is your name?" "My name is Mrs. Booth," was the reply.

"Then

I am Mr. Booth;" and as Admiral Booth he was known in the neighbourhood, his sailor-like appearance favouring this belief. In this retreat from the busy world, however, age and disease were too much for him, and he died on the 19th of December, 1851, in his seventy-sixth year.

FUNERAL OF TURNER.

There was a clause in Mr. Turner's will, requesting that he should be buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, near Sir Joshua Reynolds; and this request was complied with.

His remains were interred, with some state, on the 30th of December, in St. Paul's Cathedral. Many of the Royal Academicians, painters, and sculptors, and private friends, paid the last tribute of respect to the great painter, following the hearse, and a procession of mourning-coaches and private carriages. Among those who attended the ceremonial were Mr. Harper, chief mourner, and the executors.

Sir Charles Eastlake, Mr. Mulready, Mr. Chalon, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Baily, Mr. Leslie, Mr. Pickersgill, Mr. Stanfield, Mr. Maclise, Mr. Witherington, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Barry, Mr. Knight, Mr. Landseer, Mr. Webster, Mr. Herbert, Mr. Cope, Mr. Westmacott, Mr. Grant, Mr. Hart, Mr. Creswick, Mr. Redgrave, Mr. Cockerell, Mr. Copley Fielding, Mr. Haghe, Mr. Munro, Dr. Mayo, Colonel Thwaites, Mr. Windus, the

Rev. Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Stokes, Mr. Marsh, Dr. Price, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Drake, Mr. Round, &c. Mr. Turner's housekeeper was also among the mourners, with Mrs. F. Danby. The funeral service was read by the Dean Milman, Archdeacon Hale, and the Rev. Mr. Champneys.

The coffin was deposited in the south crypt of the Cathedral, next the remains of Sir Joshua Reynolds. And thus were laid in the "Painters' Corner" the remains of our greatest landscape painter.

WILL OF MR. TURNER.

Whatever may have been related of Turner's coarseness and love of money-and this doubtless with much false colour and exaggeration—it is certain that he had hoarded money for no selfish purpose. For many years he had refused to sell some of his best pictures, and when any such, painted and sold in earlier years, were offered for sale, he, if possible, purchased them; and his house was filled from basement to attic with these accumulated art-treasures.

On his death, it was found that he had by his will bequeathed to the nation all the Pictures and Drawings thus collected in his residence, No. 47, Queen Anne-street West, on condition that a suitable gallery was erected for them within ten years. His funded property, some 60,000%. he bequeathed to found an Asylum at Twickenham for decayed artists. Unfortunately, the will was unskilfully drawn, and a suit in Chancery ensued. In accordance, however, with a compromise between the parties in litigation, it was decided by an order of the Court of Chancery, dated March 19, 1856, that all pictures, drawings, sketches, finished or unfinished, by the hand of Turner, should belong to the Nation; and that all engravings and some other property should belong to the next of kin, who disputed the will.* The finished pictures thus acquired for the National Gallery, amount to about 100 in number.

The Turner Pictures and Drawings, after being temporarily exhibited to the public at Marlborough House, have been removed to South Kensington, where the bequest (103 Pictures and 97 frames of Drawings,) will be exhibited until

*Turner's sole surviving relatives were five first cousins, of whom Mr. Thomas Price Turner, a professor of music in the city of Exeter,

was one.