, despised; whom,
contrarily, Turner loved, and more than loved--understood. He got no
romantic sight of them, but an infallible one, as he prowled about the
end of his lane, watching night effects in the wintry streets; nor
sight of the poor alone, but of the poor in direct relations with the
rich. He knew, in good and evil, what both classes thought of, and how
they dwelt with, each other.

Reynolds and Gainsborough, bred in country villages, learned there the
country boy's reverential theory of "the squire," and kept it. They
painted the squire and the squire's lady as centres of the movements of
the universe, to the end of their lives. But Turner perceived the
younger squire in other aspects about his lane, occurring prominently
in its night scenery, as a dark figure, or one of two, against the
moonlight. He saw also the working of city commerce, from endless
warehouse, towering over Thames, to the back shop in the lane, with its
stale herrings--highly interesting these last; one of his father's best
friends, whom he often afterwards visited affectionately at Bristol,
being a fishmonger and glue-boiler; which gives us a friendly turn of
mind towards herring-fishing, whaling, Calais poissardes, and many
other of our choicest subjects in after life; all this being connected
with that mysterious forest below London Bridge on one side;--and, on
the other, with these masses of human power and national wealth which
weigh upon us, at Covent Garden here, with strange compression, and
crush us into narrow Hand Court.

"That mysterious forest below London Bridge"--better for the boy than
wood of pine, or grove of myrtle. How he must have tormented the
watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch anywhere in the bows,
quiet as a log, so only that he might get floated down there among the
ships, and round and round the ships, and with the ships, and by the
ships, and under the ships, staring, and clambering;--these the only
quite beautiful things he can see in all the world, except the sky;
but these, when the sun is on their sails, filling or falling,
endlessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of anchorage,
beautiful unspeakably; which ships also are inhabited by glorious
creatures--red-faced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales,
true knights, over their castle parapets--the most angelic beings in
the whole compass of London world. And Trafalgar happening long before
we can draw ships, we, nevertheless, coax