seventy plates
had been issued. Although not remunerative at the time, in later days as
high as three thousand pounds has been paid for a single copy of the
_Liber_, while the subscription price was only seventeen pounds ten
shillings; even before Turner died a copy of it was worth over thirty
guineas. Charles Turner, the engraver, used the proofs for kindling-paper;
but some years later Colnaghi, the print dealer, paid him fifteen hundred
pounds for his remaining "rubbish," as he considered it. "Good God!" cried
the old engraver; "I have been burning bank-notes all my life!" In 1878
Professor Norton, of Harvard University, published a set of thirty-three
of the best of the _Liber_ studies, reproduced in Boston by the heliotype
process. The _Liber Studiorum_ was intended to manifest Turner's command
of the whole compass of the landscape art, and was divided into six heads:
historical, pastoral, elegant pastoral, mountain, marine, and
architectural.

In 1808 Turner was appointed Professor of Perspective in the Royal
Academy. During two or three years only, out of the thirty in which he
held the professorship, did he deliver lectures. He spoke in a deep and
mumbling voice, was confused and tedious in manner, and frequently became
hopelessly entangled in blind mazes of obscure words. Sometimes when he
had written out his lectures he was unable to read them. Once, after
fumbling in his pockets, he exclaimed: "Gentlemen, I've been and left my
lecture in the hackney-coach." Still he was interested in this work, and
Ruskin says: "The zealous care with which Turner endeavored to do his duty
is proved by a large existing series of drawings, exquisitely tinted, and
often completely colored, all by his own hand, of the most difficult
perspective subjects--illustrating not only directions of light, but
effects of light, with a care and completion which would put the work of
any ordinary teacher to utter shame." During this year he took a house at
Hammersmith, Upper Mall, the garden of which ran down to the Thames, but
still retained his residence in Harley Street. In 1812 he first occupied
the house No. 47 Queen Anne Street, and this house he retained for forty
years. It was dull, dingy, unpainted, weather-beaten, sooty, with unwashed
windows and shaky doors, and seemed the very abode of poverty, and yet
when Turner died his estate was sworn as under one hundred and forty
thousand pounds--seven hundred thousand dollars. When Turner