Why his artistic tastes should have been particularly directed to marine painting can be demonstrated just as little as the possession of his extraordinary talents at all; and yet for the former a possible solution may be found in the fact that his childish imagination and predilections may have been moulded through his sea-coast experiences in old Lancashire, that picturesque maritime county of northwestern England, which is bounded on the west by the Irish Sea. At all events Edward Moran loved the sea, and this love guided every stroke of his brush in depicting his favorite element. No artist in this country, or perhaps in the world, has ever painted such water, and it was not many years after his first successes in Philadelphia that his fame spread throughout the United States, and he was easily recognized as its first marine painter. Fame and prosperity, however, did not turn his head, as they so frequently do with little men, but never with men of true genius. On the contrary, he worked with redoubled zeal and industry as he grew older, so that the number of works which he produced is marvellous. Among his famous paintings, besides the thirteen herein described, may be mentioned the following: "Virginia Sands." "A Squally Day off Newport." "Massachusetts Bay." "New York Harbor." "The Yacht Race." "The Battle of Svold." "Philadelphia from the New Park." "Minot's Ledge Light-House." "White Cliffs of Albion." "Off Block Island." "Return of the Fishers." "Outward Bound." "Low Tide." "The Gathering Storm." "Sentinel Rock, Maine." "Toilers of the Sea." "Launching of the Life-Boat." (1865.) "View on Delaware Bay." (1867.) "Evening on Vineyard Sound." (1867.) "Pinchyn Castle, North Wales." (1867.) "Moonrise at Nahant." (1867.) "The Lord Staying the Waters." (1867.) "Coast Scene Near Digby." (1868.) "Departure of the United States Fleet for Port Royal." (1868.) "After a Gale." (1869.) "On the Narrows." (1873.) "The Commerce of Nations Paying Homage to Liberty" (1877)--the great picture which came into the possession of Mr. Joseph Drexel, the banker--an allegory suggested by the then proposed Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. "Young Americans out on a Holiday." (1882.) "Life-Saving Patrol: New Jersey Coast." (1889.) "Melodies of the Sea." (1890.) "South Coast of England." (1900.) But space forbids the complete enumeration of even his more notable works, which may be counted by the hundreds.