usic, pictures and china as taste, gold and
silver articles as luxury, wedding rings as happiness, and duelling
pistols as death. I could not of course indulge in these peripatetic
fancies during the season without losing caste, but there is a season
for all things."

* * * * *

"Talking of pictures, by the way, what a marvellous falling off is there
in Wilkie!--a misfortune arising, as I take it, from a struggle after
novelty of style. There is a portrait of the King by him in Somerset
House Exhibition, like nothing on earth but a White Lion on its hinder
legs, and there was one a year or two since of George the Fourth in a
Highland dress--a powerful representation of Lady Charlotte Bury,
dressed for Norval. Look at that gem of art, his Blind Fiddler, now in
the National Gallery, or at his Waterloo Gazette, or at the Rent Day,
and compare any one of them with the senseless stuff he now produces,
and grieve. His John Knox--ill placed for effect, as relates to its
height from the ground, I admit; but look at that--flat as a
teaboard--neither depth nor brilliancy. Knox himself strongly resembling
in attitude the dragon weathercock on Bow steeple painted black. Has
Wilkie become thus demented in compliment to Turner, the Prince of
Orange (colour) of artists? Never did man suffer so severely under a
yellow fever, and yet live so long. I dare say it is extremely bad taste
to object to his efforts; but I am foolish enough to think that one of
the chief ends of art is to imitate nature as closely as possible. Look,
for instance, at Copley Fielding's splendid drawing in the Water Colour
Exhibition, of vessels in a gale off Calshot; and certainly I have never
yet seen any thing either animal or vegetable at all like the men,
women, trees, grass, mountains, which appear in Mr. Turner's works.

"This is of course an individual opinion, but I think it may be
expressed without any fear of incurring a charge of ill-nature, when one
thing is recollected. Copley Fielding cannot be a bad artist; Prout
cannot be a bad artist; Nash cannot be a bad artist; De Vint, Stanfield,
Reinagle, Calcott, none of these can be called bad artists; yet not one
of these gentlemen, eminent as they are, produce any thing like Turner's
drawings. Now if they are all wrong, Mr. Turner is quite right; but it
is utterly impossible _he_ should be so, if they are.

"Everybody knows the story of the sign-painter in the country, wh