as symbols to convey it again;—the Pre-Raphaelites look at Nature as full of beautiful facts, and, like children amid the flowers, they gather their hands full, "indifferent of worst or best," and when their hands ar full, crowd their laps and bosoms, and even drop some already picked, to make room for others which beckon from their stems,—insatiable with beauty. This is delightful,—but childlike, nevertheless. Turner was, above all, an artist; with him Art stood first, facts secondary;—with the Pre-Raphaelites it is the reverse; it is far less important to them that their facts should be broadly stated and in keeping in their pictures, than that they should be there and comprehensible. To him a fact that was out of keeping was a nuisance, and he treated it as such; while any falsehood that was in keeping was as unhesitatingly admitted, if he needed it to strengthen the impression of his picture. Turner would put a rainbow by the side of the sun, if he wanted one there;—a Pre-Raphaelite would paint with a stop-watch, to get the rainbow in the right place. In brief, Turner's was the purely subjective method of study, a method fatal to any artist of the opposite quality of mind;—that of the Pre-Raphaelites is the purely objective, absolutely enslaving to a subjective artist, and no critic capable of following out the first principles of Art to logical deductions could confound the two. The one leads to a sentimental, the other to a philosophic Art; and the only advice to be given to an artist as to his choice of method is, that, until he knows that he can trust himself in the liberty of the subjective, he had better remain in the discipline of the objective. The fascination of the former, once felt, forbids all return to the latter. If he be happy in the Pre-Raphaelite fidelity, let him thank the Muse, and tempt her no further.
There can be no more valuable lesson in Art given than that series of Turner drawings in the British collection, both as concerns its progression in the individual and those subtile analogies between painting (color) and music,—analogies often hinted at, but never, that we are aware fully followed out. Color bears the same relation to form that sound does to language. If a painter sit down before Nature and accurately match all her tints, we have an absolute but prosaic rendering of her; and the analogy to this in music would be found in a passage of ordinary conversational language written down, with its inflections and pauses recorded in musical signs. Both are transcripts of Nature, but neither is in any way poetic, or, strictly speaking, artistic; we cannot, by any addition or refinement, make them so. Now mark that in the two early drawings of Turner we have white and black with only the slightest possible suggestion of blue in the distance;—the corresponding form in language is verse, with its measure of time for measure of space, and just so much inflection of voice as these drawings have of tint,—enough not to be absolutely monotonous. We have in both cases left the idea of mere imitation of Nature, and have entered on Art. Verse grows naturally into music by simple increase of the range of inflection, as Turner's color will grow more melodic and finally harmonic. And in thus beginning Turner has placed his works above the level of prosaic painting of Nature, just as verse is placed above prose by the unanimous consent of mankind. From these simple presages of Art we may diverge and follow his development as a poet by his engravings, without ever making reference to him as a colorist. But beside being a poet, he was a great color-composer. If, leaving poetry as recited, we take the ballad, or poetry made fully melodic, we have the single voice, passing through measured inflections and with measured pauses. Correspondingly, the next in the series of Turner drawings, the "Aysgarth Force," shows no attempt to give the real color of Nature, but a single color governing the whole drawing, a golden brown passing in shadow into its exact negative. There is an absolute tint, full, and inflected through every shade of its tones to the bottom of the scale. The strict analogy is broken in this case by a dash of delicate gray-blue in the sky and gray-red in the figures, the slightest possible accompaniment to his golden-brown melody; but these were not needed, and we find earlier drawings which adhere to the strict monochrome. In the drawing next in date, the "Hastings from the Sea," we have the further step from monochrome to polychrome; we have the distinct trio, the golden yellow in the blue in the sea, and
