the _Sun of Venice_, though he was able to do
different, and in some sort more beautiful things, he could not have
done _those_ again. His period of central power thus begins with the
_Ulysses_ and closes with the _Temeraire_. The one picture, it will be
observed, is of sunrise, the other of sunset. The one of a ship entering
on its voyage, and the other of a ship closing its course for ever. The
one, in all the circumstance of the subject, unconsciously
illustrative of his own life in its triumph, the other, in all the
circumstances of its subject, unconsciously illustrative of his own life
in its decline. Accurately as the first sets forth his escape to the
wild brightness of nature, to reign amidst all her happy spirits, so
does the last set forth his returning to die by the shore of the Thames.
And besides having been painted in Turner's full power, the _Temeraire_
is of all his large pictures the best preserved. _Secondly_, the subject
of the picture is, both particularly and generally, the noblest that in
an English National Gallery could be. The _Temeraire_ was the second
ship in Nelson's line at the Battle of Trafalgar; and this picture is
the last of the group which Turner painted to illustrate that central
struggle in our national history. The part played by the _Temeraire_ in
the battle will be found detailed below. And, generally, she is a type
of one of England's chief glories. It will be always said of us, with
unabated reverence, "They built ships of the line." Take it all in all,
a Ship of the Line is the most honourable thing that man as a gregarious
animal, has ever produced. By himself, unhelped, he can do better things
than ships of the line; he can make poems and pictures, and other such
concentrations of what is best in him. But as a being living in flocks,
and hammering out, with alternate strokes and mutual agreement, what is
necessary for him in those flocks, to get or produce, the ship of the
line is his first work. And as the subject was the noblest Turner could
have chosen so also was his treatment of it. Of all pictures of subjects
not visibly involving human pain, this is, I believe, the most pathetic
that was ever painted. The utmost pensiveness which can ordinarily be
given to a landscape depends on adjuncts of ruin; but no ruin was ever
so affecting as this gliding of the vessel to her grave. A ruin cannot
be so, for whatever memories may be connected with it, and whatever
witness it may