§ 13. What Turner might have done for us, had he received help and love, instead of disdain, I can hardly trust myself to imagine. Increasing calmly in power and loveliness, his work would have formed one mighty series of poems, each great as that which I have interpreted,--the Hesperides; but becoming brighter and kinder as he advanced to happy age. Soft as Correggio's, solemn as Titian's, the enchanted color would have glowed, imperishable and pure; and the subtle thoughts risen into loftiest teaching, helpful for centuries to come. What we have asked from him, instead of this, and what received, we know. But few of us yet know how true an image those darkening wrecks of radiance give of the shadow which gained sway over his once pure and noble soul. § 14. Not unresisted, nor touching the heart's core, nor any of the old kindness and truth: yet festering work of the worm--inexplicable and terrible, such as England, by her goodly gardening, leaves to infect her earth-flowers. So far as in it lay, this century has caused every one of its great men, whose hearts were kindest, and whose spirits most perceptive of the work of God, to die without hope:--Scott, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Turner. Great England, of the Iron-heart now, not of the Lion-heart; for these souls of her children an account may perhaps be one day required of her. § 15. She has not yet read often enough that old story of the Samaritan's mercy. He whom he saved was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho--to the accursed city (so the old Church used to understand it). He should not have left Jerusalem; it was his own fault that he went out into the desert, and fell among the thieves, and was left for dead. Every one of these English children, in their day, took the desert bypath as he did, and fell among fiends--took to making bread out of stones at their bidding, and then died, torn and famished; careful England, in her pure, priestly dress, passing by on the other side. So far as we are concerned, that is the account _we_ have to give of them.[3]