orth of proofs, and sketches, and
Drawings, and Prints. It is amusing to hear Dealers saying there
can be no Liber Studiorums--when I saw neatly packed and well
labelled as many Bundles of Liber Studiorum as would fill your
entire Bookcase, and England and Wales proofs in packed and
labelled Bundles like Reams of paper, as I told you, piled nearly
to Ceiling ...

"The house must be dry as a Bone--the parcels were apparently quite
uninjured. The very large pictures were spotted, but not much. They
stood leaning against another in the large low Rooms. Some
_finished_ go to Nation, many unfinished _not_: no frames. Two are
given unconditional of Gallery Building--_very fine_: if (and this
is a condition) _placed beside Claude._ The style much like the
laying on in Windmill Lock in Dealer's hands, which, now it is
cleaned, comes out a real Beauty. I believe Turner loved it. The
will desires all to be framed and repaired and put into the best
showing state; as if he could not release his money to do this till
he was dead. The Top of his Gallery is one ruin of Glass and
patches of paper, now only just made weather-proof ...

"I saw in Turner's Rooms, _Geo. Morlands_ and _Wilsons_ and
_Claudes_ and _portraits_ in various stiles _all by Turner._ He
copied every man, was every man first, and took up his own style,
casting all others away. It seems to me you may keep your money and
revel for ever and for nothing among Turner's Works."

Among the quantities so recklessly thrown aside for dust, damp, soot,
mice and worms to destroy--some 15,000 Ruskin reckoned at first, 19,000
later on--there were many fine drawings, which had been used by the
engravers, and vast numbers of interesting and valuable studies in
colour and in pencil. Four hundred of these were extricated from the
chaos, and with infinite pains cleaned, flattened, mounted, dated and
described, and placed in sliding frames in cabinets devised by Ruskin,
or else in swivel frames, to let both sides of the paper be seen. The
first results of the work were shown in an Exhibition at Marlborough
House during the winter, for which he wrote another catalogue. Of the
whole collection he began a more complete account, which was too
elaborate to be finished in that form; but in 1881 he published a
"Catalogue of the Drawings and Sketches of J M.W. Turner, R.A., at
p