when a boy of twelve or fourteen, it is
very singular how large a proportion consists of careful studies of
stranded boats. Now, after some fifteen years of conscientious labor,
with the single view of acquiring knowledge of the ends and powers of
art, I have come to one conclusion, which at the beginning of those
fifteen years would have been very astonishing to myself--that, of all
our modern school of landscape painters, next to Turner, and before the
rise of the Pre-Raphaelites, the man whose works are on the whole most
valuable, and show the highest intellect, is Samuel Prout. It is very
notable that also in Prout's early studies, shipping subjects took not
merely a prominent, but I think even a principal, place.

The reason of this is very evident: both Turner and Prout had in them an
untaught, inherent perception of what was great and pictorial. They
could not find it in the buildings or in the scenes immediately around
them. But they saw some element of real power in the boats. Prout
afterwards found material suited to his genius in other directions, and
left his first love; but Turner retained the early affection to the
close of his life, and the last oil picture which he painted, before his
noble hand forgot its cunning, was the Wreck-buoy. The last thoroughly
perfect picture he ever painted, was the Old Temeraire.

The studies which he was able to make from nature in his early years,
are chiefly of fishing-boats, barges, and other minor marine still life;
and his better acquaintance with this kind of shipping than with the
larger kind is very marked in the Liber Studiorum, in which there are
five careful studies of fishing-boats under various circumstances;
namely, Calais Harbor, Sir John Mildmay's Picture, Flint Castle, Marine
Dabblers, and the Calm; while of other shipping, there are only two
subjects, both exceedingly unsatisfactory.

Turner, however, deemed it necessary to his reputation at that period
that he should paint pictures in the style of Vandevelde; and, in order
to render the resemblance more complete, he appears to have made careful
drawings of the different parts of old Dutch shipping. I found a large
number of such drawings among the contents of his neglected portfolios
at his death; some were clearly not by his own hand, others appeared to
be transcripts by him from prints or earlier drawings; the quantity
altogether was very great, and the evidence of his prolonged attention
to the subje