its right place in usefulness and honour; and I strove to bring the
painter's work into this due place, while the painter was yet alive.
But he knew, better than I, the uselessness of talking about what
people could not see for themselves. He always discouraged me
scornfully, even when he thanked me--and he died before even the
superficial effect of my work was visible. I went on, however,
thinking I could at least be of use to the public, if not to him, in
proving his power. My books got talked about a little. The prices
of modern pictures, generally, rose, and I was beginning to take
some pleasure in a sense of gradual victory, when, fortunately or
unfortunately, an opportunity of perfect trial undeceived me at
once, and for ever. The Trustees of the National Gallery
commissioned me to arrange the Turner drawings there, and permitted
me to prepare three hundred examples of his studies from nature, for
exhibition at Kensington. At Kensington they were, and are, placed
for exhibition; but they are not exhibited, for the room in which
they hang is always empty.

Well--this showed me at once, that those ten years of my life had
been, in their chief purpose, lost. For that, I did not so much
care; I had, at least, learned my own business thoroughly, and
should be able, as I fondly supposed, after such a lesson, now to
use my knowledge with better effect. But what I did care for was
the--to me frightful--discovery, that the most splendid genius in
the arts might be permitted by Providence to labour and perish
uselessly; that in the very fineness of it there might be something
rendering it invisible to ordinary eyes; but that, with this strange
excellence, faults might be mingled which would be as deadly as its
virtues were vain; that the glory of it was perishable, as well as
invisible, and the gift and grace of it might be to us as snow in