Sec. 9. If the reader sees nothing in this drawing (Fig. 108) that he can like,--although, indeed, I would have him prefer the work of Turner,--let him be assured that he does not yet understand on what Titian's reputation is founded. No painter's name is oftener in the mouth of the ordinary connoisseur, and no painter was ever less understood. His power of color is indeed perfect, but so is Bonifazio's. Titian's _supremacy_ above all the other Venetians, except Tintoret and Veronese, consists in the firm truth of his portraiture, and more or less masterly understanding of the nature of stones, trees, men, or whatever else he took in hand to paint; so that, without some correlative understanding in the spectator, Titian's work, in its highest qualities, must be utterly dead and unappealing to him. [Illustration: FIG. 109.] [Illustration: FIG. 110.] [Illustration: FIG. 111.] [Illustration: FIG. 112.] Sec. 10. I give one more example from the lower part of the same print (Fig. 109), in which a stone, with an eddy round it, is nearly as well drawn as it can be in the simple method of the early wood-engraving. Perhaps the reader will feel its truth better by contrast with a fragment or two of modern Idealism. Here, for instance (Fig. 110), is a group of stones, highly entertaining in their variety of form, out of the subject of "Christian vanquishing Apollyon," in the outlines to the Pilgrim's Progress, published by the Art-Union, the idealism being here wrought to a pitch of extraordinary brilliancy by the exciting nature of the subject. Next (Fig. 111) is another poetical conception, one of Flaxman's, representing the eddies and stones of the Pool of Envy (Flaxman's Dante), which may be conveniently compared with the Titianesque stones and streams. And, finally, Fig. 112 represents, also on Flaxman's authority, those stones of an "Alpine" character, of which Dante says that he "Climbed with heart of proof the adverse steep." It seems at first curious that every one of the forms that Flaxman has chanced upon should be an impossible one--a form which a stone never could assume: but this is the Nemesis of false idealism, and the inevitable one.