128 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

of that art, with which you are at present surrounded, and which enables you to open your walls as it were into so many windows,¹ through which you can see whatever has charmed you in the fairest scenery of your country, you will do well to remember as Turneresque.

So then you have these five periods to recollect-you will have no difficulty, I trust, in doing so,-the periods of Giotto, Leonardo, Titian, pastoralism, and Turner.

101. But Turner’s work is yet only begun. His greatness is, as yet, altogether denied by many; and to the full, felt by very few. But every day that he lies in his grave will bring some new acknowledgment of his power; and through those eyes, now filled with dust, generations yet unborn will learn to behold the light of nature.

You have some ground to-night to accuse me of dogmatism. I can bring no proof before you of what I so boldly assert. But I would not have accepted your invitation to address you, unless I had felt that I had a right to be, in this matter, dogmatic. I did not come here to tell you of my beliefs or my conjectures; I came to tell you the truth which I have given fifteen years of my life² to as certain, that this man, this Turner, of whom you have known so little while he was living among you, will one day take his place beside Shakspeare³ and Verulam, in the annals of the light of England.

Yes: beside Shakspeare and Verulam, a third star in that central constellation, round which, in the astronomy of intellect, all other stars make their circuit. By Shakspeare, humanity was unsealed to you; by Verulam the principles of nature; and by Turner, her aspect.⁴ All these were sent to unlock one of the gates of light, and to

¹ [For pictures as windows, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. x.]

² [Or even longer, the first essay in defence of Turner (Vol. III. p. 635) dating back to 1836.]

³ [So in a letter of 1843 Ruskin spoke of “seeing the name of Turner placed on the same impregnable height with that of Shakspeare”: see Vol. III. p. 653.]

4 [See Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xvii. § 43, where Ruskin explains the comparison with Bacon on the ground that Turner was a master in the science of aspect, as Bacon in that of essence.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]