If Ruskin, in estimating Whistler, had paused but a moment and recalled just a paragraph from the preface to the second edition of the first volume of “Modern Painters” he would have been more tolerant, for he there said: “All that is highest in art, all that is creative and imaginative, is formed and created by every great master for himself, and cannot be repeated or imitated by others. We judge of the excellence of a rising writer, not so much by the resemblance of his works to what has been done before as by their difference from it; and while we advise him, in the first trials of strength, to set certain models before him, with respect to inferior points,--one for versification, another for arrangement, another for treatment,--we yet admit not his greatness until he has broken away from all his models and struck forth versification, arrangement, and treatment of his own.” And was not Ruskin himself the life-long apologist for a most original and extraordinary genius,--a man who to his last days was as little understood as Whistler? Here are some things that were said of Turner as late as 1842, when he was doing some of his best work: “The ‘Dogano’ (_sic_) and ‘Campo Santo’ have a glorious _ensemble_, and are produced by wonderful art, but they mean nothing. They are produced as if by throwing handfuls of white and blue and red at the canvas, letting what chanced to stick, stick, and then shadowing in some forms to make the appearance of a picture; and yet there is a fine harmony in the highest range of color to please the sense of vision. We admire and we lament to see such genius so employed. But ‘Farther on you may fare worse.’ No. 182 is a snow-storm of most unintelligible character,--the snow-storm of a confused dream, with a steamboat ‘making signals,’ and (apparently, like the painter who was in it) ‘going by the head’ (lead?). Neither by land nor water was such a scene ever witnessed. And of 338, ‘Burial at Sea,’ though there is a striking effect, still the whole is so idealized and removed from truth that, instead of the feeling it ought to effect, it only excites ridicule. And No. 353 caps all for absurdity, without even any of the redeeming qualities of the rest. It represents Bonaparte--facetiously described as the ‘Exile and the rock-limpet’--standing on the sea-shore at St. Helena ... the whole thing is so truly ludicrous,” etc.[24] Another writer says: