proving it in London in the spring of 1842 from Samuel
Rogers' treasures, of which the chief (now in the National Gallery) was
the "Christ appearing to the Magdalen."

Much as the author of "Modern Painters" owed to these friends and
teachers, and to the advantages of his varied training, he would never
have written his great work without a further inspiration. Harding's
especial forte was his method of drawing trees. He looked at Nature with
an eye which, for his period, was singularly fresh and unprejudiced; he
had a strong feeling for truth of structure as well as for picturesque
effect, and he taught his pupils to observe as well as to draw. But in
his own practice he rested too much on _having observed_; formed a
style, and copied himself if he did not copy the old masters; Hence he
held to rules of composition and conscious graces of arrangement; and
while he taught naturalism in study, he followed it up with teaching
artifice in practice.

Turner, who was not a drawing-master, lay under no necessity to
formulate his principles and stick to them. On the contrary, his style
developed like a kaleidoscope. He had been in Switzerland and on the
Rhine in 1841, "painting his impressions," making water-colour notes
from memory of effects that had struck him. From one of these,
"Spluegen," he had made a finished picture, and now wished to get
commissions for more of the same class. Ruskin was greatly interested in
this series, because they were not landscapes of the ordinary type,
scenes from Nature squeezed into the mould of recognised artistic
composition, nor, on the other hand, mere photographic transcripts; but
dreams, as it were, of the mountains and sunsets, in which Turner's
wealth of detail was suggested, and his knowledge of form expressed,
together with the unity which comes of the faithful record of a single
impression.

The lesson was soon enforced upon Ruskin's mind by example. One day,
while taking his student's constitutional, he noticed a tree-stem with
ivy upon it, which seemed not ungraceful, and invited a sketch. As he
drew he fell into the spirit of its natural arrangement, and soon
perceived how much finer it was as a piece of design than any
conventional rearrangement would be. Harding had tried to show him how
to generalize foliage; but in this example he saw that not
generalization was needed to get its beauty, but truth.

At Fontainebleau soon after, in much the same circumstances, a study o