tarting of mail
coaches, interiors of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, &c.;
then all kinds of inner domestic life--interiors of rooms, studies of
costumes, of still life, and heraldry, including multitudes of
symbolical vignettes; then marine scenery of every kind, full of local
incident; every kind of boat and method of fishing for particular fish,
being specifically drawn, round the whole coast of England;--pilchard
fishing at St. Ives, whiting fishing at Margate, herring at Loch Fyne;
and all kinds of shipping, including studies of every separate part of
the vessels, and many marine battle-pieces, two in particular of
Trafalgar, both of high importance,--one of the Victory after the
battle, now in Greenwich Hospital; another of the Death of Nelson, in
his own gallery; then all kinds of mountain scenery, some idealised into
compositions, others of definite localities; together with classical
compositions, Romes and Carthages and such others, by the myriad, with
mythological, historical, or allegorical figures,--nymphs, monsters, and
spectres; heroes and divinities.[100]

What general feeling, it may be asked incredulously, can possibly
pervade all this? This, the greatest of all feelings--an utter
forgetfulness of self. Throughout the whole period with which we are at
present concerned, Turner appears as a man of sympathy absolutely
infinite--a sympathy so all-embracing, that I know nothing but that of
Shakespeare comparable with it. A soldier's wife resting by the roadside
is not beneath it; Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, watching the dead
bodies of her sons, not above it. Nothing can possibly be so mean as
that it will not interest his whole mind, and carry away his whole
heart; nothing so great or solemn but that he can raise himself into
harmony with it; and it is impossible to prophesy of him at any moment,
whether, the next, he will be in laughter or in tears.

This is the root of the man's greatness; and it follows as a matter of
course that this sympathy must give him a subtle power of expression,
even of the characters of mere material things, such as no other painter
ever possessed. The man who can best feel the difference between
rudeness and tenderness in humanity, perceives also more difference
between the branches of an oak and a willow than any one else would; and
therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the drawings
themselves is the speciality of whatever they represent--the thor