'When the pictures are re-hung, as sometimes I believe is the case, it might, perhaps, be as well to turn these upside down and see how they would look _then_. The Campo Santo of Venice, when examined closely, is scarcely less mysterious; at a little distance, however, it is a most brilliant, airy, and beautiful picture. O for the old days before Mr. Turner had lighted on "The Fallacies" and could see like other people!'--_An Exhibition Gossip_, by Michael Angelo Titmarsh, _Ainsworth's Magazine_,1843. [26] _The Almanack of the Month_, 1846--in which see also a comical drawing, by Mr. Richard Doyle, of 'Turner painting one of his pictures,' and the accompanying letterpress:--'Considerable discussion has arisen as to the mode in which Turner goes to work to paint his pictures. Some think he mixes a few colours on his canvas instead of on his palette, and sends the result to be exhibited. Another ingenious theory is that he puts a canvas in a sort of pillory, and pelts it with eggs and other missiles, when appending to the mess some outrageous title, he has it hung in a good position at the Academy. Our own idea is, that he chooses four or five good places in which he hangs up some regularly framed squares of blank canvas; a day or so before the opening of the Exhibition, we believe he goes down to the Academy with a quantity of colours and a nine pound brush, with which he dabs away for a few minutes, and his work is finished,' etc. etc. 'Cut off in great part,' says Mr. Ruskin, 'from all society, first by labour and last by sickness, hunted to his grave by the malignities of small critics and the jealousies of hopeless rivalry, he died in the house of a stranger.' As Mr. Leslie, his fellow-academician, remarks upon this passage truly enough, 'This was Turner's own fault. No death-bed could be more surrounded by attentive friends than his might have been, had he chosen to let his friends know where he lived.' But he seldom answered letters; his place of residence was a profound mystery to all; and he was living under an assumed name. To the Chelsea street-boys he was known as 'Puggy Booth,' and by his neighbours he was deemed to be an old admiral in reduced circumstances. His house in Queen Anne Street was closed, terribly out of repair--black with dirt. After much knocking at the door it was opened, if at all, by an old woman, her face half-concealed, owing to some cancerous disfigurement; she had kept the visitor waiting while she assumed a large apron--hung always behind the door on a peg, handy for the purpose,--which hid the grimy and tattered state of her dress. The drawing-room was tenanted by half-a-dozen Manx cats. In the other rooms, rats and mice made havoc with hoarded drawings and engravings. Many of the pictures in the gallery were warped and cracked, and mildewed by neglect and damp. At Sandycombe Lodge, a few of the academicians, including Mr. Mulready, had once been regaled with tea; and Mr. Pye, the engraver, had been treated