It is not possible to lay great stress upon the early failings of Harlow; errors, after all, rather of manners than of morals. Had he lived, it is likely that a successful career would have almost effaced the recollection of these, while it would certainly have contradicted them as evidences of character. As Lawrence said of his dead pupil, generously yet truthfully, 'he was the most promising of all our painters.' There was the material for a great artist in Harlow. He died too young for his fame, and for his art. A proof engraving of one of his best works (a portrait of Northcote) was brought to Lawrence to touch upon:-- 'Harlow had faults,' he said, 'but we must not remember the faults of one who so greatly improved himself in his art. It shall never be said that the finest work from so great a man went into the world without such assistance as I can give.' TURNER AND RUSKIN. The difficulty the vulgar have experienced in comprehending that kings and queens, and generally persons high in authority, are simply men and women after all--their ordinary appearance, dress, manners, and habits not greatly different from those of the rest of mankind--has been a frequent subject of remark and ridicule. Years back, at the American theatres, spectators in the pit were often gravely asking each other, whether the sovereign of England was really accustomed to appear in the London streets, wearing a similar wonderful costume to that in which Mr. Lucius Junius Booth was then strutting and ranting as Richard the Third; the fact of the Drury Lane copies of the dresses worn at the coronation of George IV. having been taken to the other side of the Atlantic, and _The Coronation_ performed at most of the chief cities, supplying, perhaps, an apology for the reasoning which prompted the inquiry. But the popular notion, that a monarch habitually walks about carrying on his head a jewelled crown of enormous value and weight, finds a reflection in higher stages of culture and intelligence. An analogous delusion is traceable amongst people occupying very reputable rounds upon the social ladder. A state of confusion between a man and his office, or his works, is by no means confined to those whom it is the fashion to designate as 'the masses.' Are we not continually meeting ladies and gentlemen, of otherwise commendable intellectual endowments, bent upon bewildering themselves with the notion, that the sentimental novelist is necessarily a creature of sentiment--that the comic actor, out of his part and off his stage, is still laughable and amusing--that the writer of poetry, as a consequence, lives poetry, and the career of the painter is inevitably picturesque?