is manly power itself acted merely in the accumulation
of memories, remains, as I said, a question undetermined; but at all
events, Turner's mind is not more, in my estimation, distinguished above
others by its demonstrably arranging and ruling faculties, than by its
demonstrably retentive and submissive faculties; and the longer I
investigate it, the more this tenderness of perception and grasp of
memory seem to me the root of its greatness. So that I am more and more
convinced of what I had to state respecting the imagination, now many
years ago, viz., that its true force lies in its marvellous insight and
foresight--that it is, instead of a false and deceptive faculty, exactly
the most accurate and truth-telling faculty which the human mind
possesses; and all the more truth-telling, because, in _its_ work, the
vanity and individualism of the man himself are crushed, and he becomes
a mere instrument or mirror, used by a higher power for the reflection
to others of a truth which no effort of his could ever have ascertained;
so that all mathematical, and arithmetical, and generally scientific
truth, is, in comparison, truth of the husk and surface, hard and
shallow; and only the imaginative truth is precious. Hence, whenever we
want to know what are the chief facts of any case, it is better not to
go to political economists, nor to mathematicians, but to the great
poets; for I find they always see more of the matter than any one else:
and in like manner those who want to know the real facts of the world's
outside aspect, will find that they cannot trust maps, nor charts, nor
any manner of mensuration; the most important facts being always quite
immeasurable, and that (with only some occasional and trifling
inconvenience, if they form too definite anticipations as to the
position of a bridge here, or a road there) the Turnerian topography is
the only one to be trusted.

[Illustration: Turner. T. Boys.
23. Turner's Latest "Nottingham."]

Sec. 22. One or two important corollaries may be drawn from these
principles, respecting the kind of fidelity which is to be exacted from
men who have no imaginative power. It has been stated, over and over
again, that it is not _possible_ to draw the whole of nature, as in a
mirror. Certain omissions must be made, and certain conventionalities
admitted, in all art. Now it ought to be the instinctive affection of
each painter which guides him to the omissi