ner once gave an engraving to a friend and then, after a
year, sent demanding it back. But to a person with a groat's worth of wit
the matter is plain: the dreamy, abstracted artist, who bumped into his
next-door neighbors on the street and never knew them, forgot he had
given the picture and believed he had only loaned it. This is made still
more apparent by the fact that, when he sent for the engraving in
question, he administered a rebuke to the man for keeping it so long. The
poor dullard who received the note flew into a rage--returned the
picture--sent his compliments and begged the great artist to "take your
picture and go to the devil."

Then certain scribblers, who through mental disease had lost the capacity
for mirth, dipped their pen in aqua fortis and wrote of the "innate
meanness," the "malice prepense" and the "Old Adam" which dwelt in the
heart of Turner. No one laughed except a few Irishmen, and an American
or two, who chanced to hear of the story.

Of Turner's many pictures I will mention in detail but two, both of which
are to be seen on the walls of the National Gallery. First, "The Old
Temeraire." This warship had been sold out of service and was being towed
away to be broken up. The scene was photographed on Turner's brain, and
he immortalized it on canvas. We can not do better than borrow the words
of Mr. Ruskin:

"Of all pictures not visibly involving human pain, this is the most
pathetic ever painted.

"The utmost pensiveness which can ordinarily be given to a landscape
depends on adjuncts of ruin, but no ruin was ever so affecting as the
gliding of this ship to her grave. This particular ship, crowned in the
Trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory--surely, if ever anything
without a soul deserved honor or affection we owe them here. Surely, some
sacred care might have been left in our thoughts for her; some quiet
space amid the lapse of English waters! Nay, not so. We have stern
keepers to trust her glory to--the fire and the worm. Nevermore shall
sunset lay golden robe upon her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that
part at her gliding. Perhaps where the low gate opens to some cottage
garden, the tired traveler may ask, idly, why the moss grows so green on
the rugged wood; and even the sailor's child may not know that the night
dew lies deep in the warrents of the old Temeraire."

"The Burial of Sir David Wilkie at Sea" has brought tears to many eyes.
Yet there is no burial. The ship