simply as poetry, did suffer from his philosophic studies. There may be something in the very nature of the human soul which sets bounds to the creation or expression of beauty. But Turner was not like Wordsworth. He was for good and ill essentially and solely an artist. The play of shapes and colours was probably dearer to him than food or raiment. Having by sheer good fortune carried his art to its highest attainable pitch of beauty before he had reached his fortieth year, he was placed in an embarrassing position. The dialectical movement of beauty would now carry him outside his art, into regions where the individual man might reap rich gains, but where the artist could reap only sorrow and disappointment. The artist in Turner was stronger than the man. He loved the sensuous medium of art more than the spiritual beauty into which the current of traditional wisdom had carried him. The remainder of his life is therefore dedicated to the passionate and audacious development of the material beauties of his art. We have now to trace in his works the gradual encroachments of the purely sensuous side of his art. For a time all seems well, perhaps more than well, for the gain in all the lower elements of his art is very striking. During the next twenty years his works gain constantly in the sensuous attractiveness of colour and in the formal beauties of rhythm and design. The loss of beauty is compensated by deep draughts of pleasantness. Yet amid the feverish intoxication of sensuous beauty a wild unrest and despair make themselves increasingly felt. The man has sacrificed himself to his art, and the starved human soul turns in bitterness from the ardently desired rewards of the most brilliantly triumphant artistic career that modern times have witnessed. It is usual in treating mainly of Turner’s oil paintings to fix upon the year 1815 as the great turning-point in his career. After [Illustration: _PLATE XLVI_ RABY CASTLE PENCIL. ABOUT 1807] [Illustration: _PLATE XLVII_ RABY CASTLE PENCIL. ABOUT 1817]