om, far away. Now, observe, you may
tell both of these men, when they are young, that they are to be honest,
that they have an important function, and that they are not to care what
Raphael did. This you may wholesomely impress on them both. But fancy
the exquisite absurdity of expecting either of them to possess any of
the qualities of the other.

I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last, and of invention in
the first painter, that the contrast between them might be more
striking; but, with very slight modification, both the characters are
real. Grant to the first considerable inventive power, with exquisite
sense of color; and give to the second, in addition to all his other
faculties, the eye of an eagle; and the first is John Everett Millais,
the second Joseph Mallard William Turner.

They are among the few men who have defied all false teaching, and have,
therefore, in great measure, done justice to the gifts with which they
were entrusted. They stand at opposite poles, marking culminating points
of art in both directions; between them, or in various relations to
them, we may class five or six more living artists who, in like manner,
have done justice to their powers. I trust that I may be pardoned for
naming them, in order that the reader may know how the strong innate
genius in each has been invariably accompanied with the same humility,
earnestness, and industry in study.

It is hardly necessary to point out the earnestness or humility in the
works of William Hunt; but it may be so to suggest the high value they
possess as records of English rural life, and _still_ life. Who is there
who for a moment could contend with him in the unaffected, yet humorous
truth with which he has painted our peasant children? Who is there who
does not sympathize with him in the simple love with which he dwells on
the brightness and bloom of our summer fruit and flowers? And yet there
is something to be regretted concerning him: why should he be allowed
continually to paint the same bunches of hot-house grapes, and supply
to the Water Color Society a succession of pineapples with the
regularity of a Covent Garden fruiterer? He has of late discovered that
primrose banks are lovely; but there are other things grow wild besides
primroses: what undreamt-of loveliness might he not bring back to us, if
he would lose himself for a summer in Highland foregrounds; if he would
paint the heather as it grows, and the foxglove and