I said that Turner painted the labor of men, their sorrow, and their death. This he did nearly in the same tones of mind which prompted Byron's poem of Childe Harold, and the loveliest result of his art, in the central period of it, was an effort to express on a single canvas the meaning of that poem. It may be now seen, by strange coincidence, associated with two others--Caligula's Bridge and the Apollo and Sibyl; the one illustrative of the vanity of human labor, the other of the vanity of human life.[10] He painted these, as I said, in the same tone of mind which formed the Childe Harold poem, but with different capacity: Turner's sense of beauty was perfect; deeper, therefore, far than Byron's; only that of Keats and Tennyson being comparable with it. And Turner's love of truth was as stern and patient as Dante's; so that when over these great capacities come the shadows of despair, the wreck is infinitely sterner and more sorrowful. With no sweet home for his childhood,--friendless in youth,--loveless in manhood,--and hopeless in death, Turner was what Dante might have been, without the "bello ovile," without Casella, without Beatrice, and without Him who gave them all, and took them all away. § 27. I will trace this state of his mind farther, in a little while. Meantime, I want you to note only the result upon his work;--how, through all the remainder of his life, wherever he looked, he saw ruin. Ruin, and twilight. What was the distinctive effect of light which he introduced, such as no man had painted before? Brightness, indeed, he gave, as we have seen, because it was true and right; but in this he only perfected what others had attempted. His own favorite light is not Æglé, but Hesperid Æglé. Fading of the last rays of sunset. Faint breathing of the sorrow of night.