Beyond Union-street was a rope-walk running north, shaded by two rows of magnificent elms under which red-nosed Wilson and Dr. Johnson's Italian friend loved to perambulate, prior to dining with Wilton, the sculptor. On the right-hand side of this rope-walk there was a bank, with a walk which commanded views of the distant hills and rounded eminences of Highgate, Hampstead, and Harrow.

Hoys plied up and down the Thames, and the great coaching inn-yards in the city were crowded with stage coaches rolling in daily (come rain or snow, sunshine or cloud), from York and Lincoln, Oxford, Salisbury, or Brighton.

Ranelagh and Marylebone Gardens were then the great places of amusement; the Pantheon was built two years before Turner's birth, and has been visited by Dr. Johnson and Boswell, who in one breath pronounced it inferior to Ranelagh. It is to exist till 1792; when Turner will visit its charred ruins and make an exquisite drawing of them.

Queen Anne-street and Harley-street, where Turner afterwards resided, were at his birth only partially built. Green fields of sooty grass, echoing to the shouts of boys in stiff-skirted coats and buckled shoes, stretch over where Portland Chapel, Wimpole-street, and Devonshire-place now rear their square boxes of grim black brick; and at this time. even Marylebone Gardens could be entered either from the High-street or at the back through fields, between which and the main road were the little binns of partitioned-off tea-gardens.

But still, with all this propinquity of green fields,

OLD SOMERSET HOUSE.

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the London of Turner's childhood was in its great features the London we still wander in. The dark glistening river is unaltered. St. Paul's still soars above it, with its black balloon globing over the red roofs; and the struggling eddies of smoke. The Monument still rears its brazen flames to the rare sun. The Strand still tracks the river. We thread daily the same Temple Bar he as a child, and Dr. Johnson as an old man, threaded. We can still feel that our London and the London of Turner's childhood are in all essentials one and the same. But in 1775 there had been a change in London specially interesting to us. The old Somerset House, built in 1547-the Protector Somerset's-was pulled down this year, to make room for Chambers's building. In the old entrance-hall in the new building at the foot of the stairs, afterwards stood the Hercules and Two Centaurs, and in another part of the hall the Apollo Belvidere. The Royal Academy in Pall Mall was adjacent to old Carlton House; and between it and Dalton's print-warehouse there were trees visible from the road; while from Leicester-square you could still get glimpses of Temple Bar, though with no rebels' heads rising above it.

The old Savoy of Turner's childhood is gone.

But old Lambeth Palace, from which he made his first drawing for the Academy, exists, with its smirched brick towers and the dim grey lantern chapel, just as when Turner first rowed past it to make his moonlight drawing at Millbank.

Nor must I here forget another spot of old London that is connected with Turner's memory.

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THE GALLERY IN PRIORY GARDENS.

In 1758, Wilton, the sulptor, and his friend Cipriani, had been chosen directors of a Statue Gallery in Priory Gardens, opened by the Duke of Richmond for the use of art-students. It consisted of about thirty casts from antique statues, and the liberality of the Duke was celebrated by Hayley the poet, Romney, his friend, being a constant student there at the time Smollett was the Duke's chaplain. In 1770, after being shut for some time, the gallery was reopened, and placed under the direction of the Society of Artists of Great Britain, whose Academy was in Maiden-lane, William Woollett being secretary of the society.

Years after Turner will write with admiration of Woollett.

There is no doubt that the propinquity of this Academy influenced Turner's mind. Can we doubt that Romney and Woollett must have often come in to chat with the barber who lived opposite, and perhaps have lent drawings to the clever boy?

CHAPTER III.

THE SKY PAINTER.

IT is to this period of Turner's life that we may safely refer some of the many visits paid to Bristol, to a Mr. Harraway, an old friend of his father's, and a fishmonger and glue-boiler in Broadway.*

I like to associate that dirty and venerable old legendary city with Turner. I can see him looking at the Exchange, where the great West Indian merchants are pacing, discussing the prices of sugar and rum; in Queen-square, where the great magnates lived; at Redcliffe church, looking up at the dark sad room over the north porch where poor Chatterton wove those lies so fatal to his peace; in the Pithay, looking at the knightly escutcheons over the doors of frowsy oldclothes-shops; on the river in a boat, hearing the nightingales in Leigh woods; on the cliffs, among the Mayflowers, looking down upon the chasm.

Many of his large drawings executed at this time, and given to Mr. Harraway, are extant. They were executed at different periods, and show the various

* Whose niece, Miss Dart, of St. James's-square, Bristol, still has the first picture Turner ever exhibited at Somerset House. Mr. Ruskin possesses his first sketch-book.

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DRAWING ONESELF.

stages of maturity that his mind successively attained. The same family once possessed another rude and early drawing of Turner's, "Cote House, Durdham Down," the seat of Sir Henry Lippincotte, with Sir Henry, Turner himself, and old Mr. Harraway all in the foreground. Perhaps the boy had been seen drawing down at the Hotwells, and was asked up, all red and smiling, to Cote House.

There is a view of "Oxford," also of the same date. To the same date, or a year earlier or later (1790 or 1791, not when he was eighteen, it is wrongly inscribed), must be attributed a crude boyish portrait executed for Mr. Harraway during one of these holiday and sketching visits. The face, weakly drawn, is simple and boyish, the long luxuriant curling hair falls down on his shoulders and frilled jacket; the nostrils and mouth are delicately drawn, with a carefulness indeed that amounts to timidity. The face shows no promise of genius, and cannot be intended for a boy of more than fifteen, or at the most sixteen years old.

The likeness was considered good at the time; the circumstances that led to its being drawn were these: Turner (who is known to have taken his friend Girtin's portrait) had drawn likenesses of two of his friend Harraway's children, the family pressed him to make a drawing of himself.

"How am I to do it?" said the boy.

"In your bedroom, with a looking-glass," said somebody: so he did, and the little coloured portrait in the black oval wood frame now in Mr. Ruskin's possession was the result.