is far away in the gloom of the offing;
you can not distinguish a single figure on her decks; but you behold her
great sails standing out against the leaden blackness of the night and
you feel that out there a certain scene is being enacted. And if you
listen closely you can hear the solemn voice of the captain as he reads
the burial service. Then there is a pause--a swift, sliding sound--a
splash, and all is over.

Turner left to the British Nation by his will nineteen thousand pencil
and water-color sketches and one hundred large canvases. These pictures
are now to be seen in the National Gallery in rooms set apart and sacred
to Turner's work. For fear it may be thought that the number of sketches
mentioned above is a misprint, let us say that if he had produced one
picture a day for fifty years it would not equal the number of pieces
bestowed by his will on the Nation.

This of course takes no account of the pictures sold during his lifetime,
and, as he left a fortune of one hundred forty-four thousand pounds
(seven hundred twenty thousand dollars), we may infer that not all his
pictures were given away.

At Chelsea I stood in the little room where he breathed his last, that
bleak day in Eighteen-Hundred Fifty-one. The unlettered but motherly old
woman who took care of him in those last days never guessed his
greatness; none in the house or the neighborhood knew.

To them he was only Mr. Booth, an eccentric old man of moderate means,
who liked to muse, read, and play with children. He had no callers, no
friends; he went to the city every day and came back at night. He talked
but little, he was absent-minded, he smoked and thought and smiled and
muttered to himself. He never went to church; but once one of the lodgers
asked him what he thought of God.

"God, God--what do I know of God, what does any one! He is our life--He
is the All, but we need not fear Him--all we can do is to speak the truth
and do our work. Tomorrow we go--where? I know not, but I am not afraid."

Of art, to these strangers he would never speak. Once they urged him to
go with them to an exhibition at Kensington, but he smiled feebly as he
lit his pipe and said, "An Art Exhibition? No, no; a man can show on a
canvas so little of what he feels, it is not worth the while."

At last he died--passed peacefully away--and his attorney came and took
charge of his remains.

Many are the hard words that have been flung off by heedless tongues
abo