may imagine him.]

Turner's work, as has been said before, is peculiarly his own. It is
true that in the earlier pictures the influence of Claude Lorraine is
evident; but upon this root is engrafted an audacity in the conception
of color, a research of luminosity in comparison with which nearly all
painting is eclipsed. That this refulgence is tinged now and then
with exaggeration, with a forcing of effect that destroys the sense
of weight and solidity in depicted objects where this sense should
prevail, is certain. But it is not the least of his merits that he was
endowed with a sureness of taste which enabled him to avoid the rock
on which all his imitators have split--his work is never spectacular.
It is perhaps at its best when he has the simple elements of sea
and sky as his theme. Here, with the intangible qualities of air and
light, textureless and diaphanous, he is most at home. When it becomes
a question of the representation of earth, buildings, or trees, one
feels the lack of loving subservience to nature; the spirit against
which the art of Constable is eloquent lurks here too much.

[Illustration: PEACE--BURIAL AT SEA OF THE BODY OF SIR DAVID WILKIE.
FROM A PAINTING BY J.M.W. TURNER IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

"The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side,
And merit's corse was yielded to the tide."

--_Fallacies of Hope._

The "Fallacies of Hope" was an imaginary poem from which Turner
professed to quote whenever he wanted a line or a couplet to
explain his pictures, the avowed quotation being really of his own
composition. Sir David Wilkie, the distinguished painter, died at sea
on his way home from the Orient, June 1, 1841. His body was consigned
to the sea at midnight of that day. The picture was exhibited at the
Royal Academy in 1842.]

The stone-pines of Italy are seen through the distortion of
convention, the palaces of Venice were never builded by the hand of
man; and we lose by this the contrast which nature provides between
solid earth and filmy cloud. The onlooker must indeed be devoid of
imagination, however, if he can stand before those pictures of Turner
where the limitless sky is reflected in the waters, without profound
emotion. They may not seem _natural_ in such sense as one finds works
of more realistic aim; but one must at least agree with Turner, in the
time-worn story of the lady who taxed him with violation of natural
law, saying tha