ff, be known for a thing more truly disgraceful to human nature
than the Polynesian's dance round his feather idol, or Egyptian's
worship of the food he fattened on. From Salvator and Domenichino it is
possible to turn in a proud indignation, knowing that theirs are no
fair examples of the human mind; but it is with humbled and woful anger
that we must trace the degradation of the intellect of Rubens in his
pictures of the life of Mary of Medicis.[P]

[P] "The town of Lyons, seated upon a chariot drawn by two lions,
_lifts its eyes towards heaven_, and admires there--'les nouveaux
Epoux,'--represented in the character of Jupiter and Juno."--_Notice
des Tableaux du Musee Imperial_, 2nde partie, Paris, 1854, p. 235.

"The Queen upon her throne holds with one hand the scepter, in the
other the balance. Minerva and Cupid are at her sides. Abundance and
Prosperity distribute metals, laurels, 'et d'autres recompenses,' to
the Genii of the Fine Arts. Time, crowned with the productions of
the seasons, leads France to the--Age of Gold!"--p. 239.

So thought the Queen, and Rubens, and the Court. Time himself,
"crowned with the productions of the seasons," was, meanwhile, as
Thomas Carlyle would have told us, "quite of another opinion."

With view of arrival at Golden Age all the sooner, the Court
determine to go by water; "and Marie de Medicis gives to her son the
government of the state, under the emblem of a vessel, of which he
holds the rudder."

This piece of royal pilotage, being on the whole the most
characteristic example I remember of the Mythological marine above
alluded to, is accordingly recommended to the reader's serious
attention.

6. _Modern Period._ The gradual appreciation of the true character both
of shipping and the ocean, in the works of the painters of the last half
century, is part of that successful study of other elements of
landscape, of which I have long labored at a consistent investigation,
now partly laid before the public; I shall not, therefore, here enter
into any general inquiry respecting modern sea-painting, but limit
myself to a notice of the particular feelings which influenced Turner in
his marine studies, so far as they are shown in the series of plates
which have now been trusted to me for illustration.

Among the earliest sketches from nature which Turner appears to have
made, in pencil and Indian ink,