heir want of _truth_.
To every observation on their power, sublimity, or beauty, there has
been but one reply: They are not like nature. I therefore took my
opponents on their own ground, and demonstrated, by thorough
investigation of actual facts, that Turner _is_ like nature, and paints
more of nature than any man who ever lived. I expected this proposition
(the foundation of all my future efforts) would have been disputed with
desperate struggles, and that I should have had to fight my way to my
position inch by inch. Not at all. My opponents yield me the field at
once. One (the writer for the Athenaeum) has no other resource than the
assertion, that "he disapproves the natural style in painting. If people
want to see _nature_, let them go and look at herself. Why should they
see her at second-hand on a piece of canvas?" The other, (Blackwood,)
still more utterly discomfited, is reduced to a still more remarkable
line of defence. "It is not," he says, "what things in all respects
really are, but how they are convertible by the mind into what they are
_not_, that we have to consider." (October, 1843, p. 485.) I leave
therefore the reader to choose whether, with Blackwood and his fellows,
he will proceed to consider how things are convertible by the mind into
what they are _not_, or whether, with me, he will undergo the harder,
but perhaps on the whole more useful, labor of ascertaining--What they
are.

FOOTNOTES

[A] One or two fragments of Greek sculpture, the works of Michael
Angelo, considered with reference to their general conception and
power, and the Madonna di St. Sisto, are all that I should myself
put into such a category, not that even these are without defect,
but their defects are such as mortality could never hope to rectify.

[B] This principle is dangerous, but not the less true, and
necessary to be kept in mind. There is scarcely any truth which does
not admit of being wrested to purposes of evil, and we must not deny
the desirableness of originality, because men may err in seeking for
it, or because a pretence to it may be made, by presumption, a cloak
for its incompetence. Nevertheless, originality is never to be
sought for its own sake--otherwise it will be mere aberration--it
should arise naturally out of hard, independent study of nature; and
it should be remembered that in many things technical, it is
impossible to alter without being