s for an engraver by the name of Smith--John Raphael
Smith. Once, when Smith sent the barber's boy with a letter to a certain
art-gallery with orders to "get the answer and hurry back, mind you!" the
boy forgot to get the answer and to hurry back. Then another boy was
dispatched after the first, and boy Number Two found boy Number One
sitting, with staring eyes and open mouth, in the art-gallery before a
painting of Claude Lorraine's. When boy Number One was at last forcibly
dragged away, and reached the shop of his master, he got his ears well
cuffed for his forgetfulness. But from that day forth he was not the same
being that he had been before his eyes fell on that Claude Lorraine.

He was transformed, as much so as was Lazarus after he was called from
beyond the portals of death and had come back to earth, bearing in his
heart the secrets of the grave.

From that time Turner thought of Claude Lorraine during the day and
dreamed of him at night, and he stole his way into every exhibition where
a Claude was to be seen. And now I wish that Claude Lorraine was the
subject of this sketch, as well as Turner, for his life is a picture full
of sweetest poetry, framed in a world of dullest prose.

The eyes of this boy, whom they had thought dreamy, dull and listless,
now shone with a different light. He thirsted to achieve, to do, to
become--yes, to become a greater painter than Claude Lorraine. His
employer saw the change and smiled at it, but he allowed the lad to put
in backgrounds and add the skies to cheap prints, just because the
youngster teased to do it.

Then one day a certain patron of the shop came and looked over the
shoulder of the Turner boy, and he said, "He has skill--perhaps talent."

And I think the recording angel should give this man a separate page in
the Book of Remembrance and write his name in illuminated colors, for he
gave young Turner access to his own collection and to his library, and he
never cuffed him nor kicked him nor called him dunce--whereat the boy was
much surprised. But he encouraged the youth to sketch a picture in
water-colors and then he bought the picture and paid him ten shillings
for it; and the name of this man was Doctor Munro.

The next year, when young Turner was fourteen, Doctor Munro had him
admitted to the Royal Academy as a student, and in Seventeen Hundred
Ninety he exhibited a water-color of the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth.

The picture took no prize, and doubtl