With the true artist, as with Nature herself, the more full the representation, the more profound and enchanting is the sense of mystery.

We look and look, as on a flower of which we cannot scrutinize the secret life, yet b; looking seem constantly drawn nearer to the soul that causes and governs that life.
But in the French pictures suffering is represented by streams of blood,--wickedness by the most ghastly contortions.
I saw a movement in the opposite direction in England; it was in Turner's pictures of the later period.

It is well known that Turner, so long an idol of the English public, paints now in a manner which has caused the liveliest dissensions in the world of connoisseurs.
There are two parties, one of which maintains, not only that the pictures of the late period are not good, but that they are not pictures at all,--that it is impossible to make out the design, or find what Turner is aiming at by those strange blotches of color.
The other party declare that these pictures are not only good, but divine,--that whoever looks upon them in the true manner will not fail to find there somewhat ineffably and transcendently admirable,--the soul of Art.

Books have been written to defend this side of the question.
I had become much interested about this matter, as the fervor of feeling on either side seemed to denote that there was something real and vital going on, and, while time would not permit my visiting other private collections in London and its neighborhood, I insisted on taking it for one of Turner's pictures.

It was at the house of one of his devoutest disciples, who has arranged everything in the rooms to harmonize with them.