One of the points in Turner which increased the general falseness of impression respecting him was a curious dislike he had to _appear_ kind. Drawing, with one of his best friends, at the bridge of St. Martin's, the friend got into great difficulty over a colored sketch. Turner looked over him a little while, then said, in a grumbling way--"I haven't got any paper I like; let me try yours." Receiving a block book, he disappeared for an hour and a half. Returning, he threw the book down, with a growl, saying--"I can't make anything of your paper." There were three sketches on it, in three distinct states of progress, showing the process of coloring from beginning to end, and clearing up every difficulty which his friend had got into. When he gave advice, also, it was apt to come in the form of a keen question, or a quotation of some one else's opinion, rarely a statement of his own. To the same person producing a sketch, which had no special character: "What are you in _search_ of?" Note this expression. Turner knew that passionate seeking only leads to passionate finding. Sometimes, however, the advice would come with a startling distinctness. A church spire having been left out in a sketch of a town--"Why did you not put that in?" "I hadn't time." "Then you should take a subject more suited to your capacity." Many people would have gone away considering this an insult, whereas it was only a sudden flash from Turner's earnest requirement of wholeness or perfectness of conception. "Whatever you do, large or small, do it wholly; take a slight subject if you will, but don't leave things out." But the principal reason for Turner's having got the reputation of always refusing advice was, that artists came to him in a state of mind in which he knew they could not receive it. Virtually, the entire conviction of the artists of his time respecting him was, that he had got a secret, which he could tell, if he liked, that would make them all Turners. They came to him with this general formula of request clearly in their hearts, if not definitely on their lips: "You know, Mr. Turner, we are all of us quite as clever as you are, and could do all that very well, and we should really like to do a little of it occasionally, only we haven't quite your trick; there's something in it, of course, which you only found out by accident, and it is very ill-natured and unkind of you not to tell us how the thing is done; what do you rub your colors over with, and where ought we to put in the black patches?" This was the practical meaning of the artistical questioning of his day, to which Turner very resolvedly made no answer. On the contrary, he took great care that any tricks of execution he actually did use should not be known.