mountains as nobody else but Turner could, in water-colour; he had
enough mystery and poetry to interest the younger Ruskin, and enough
resemblance to ordinary views of Nature to please the elder. So they
both went to Newman Street to his painting-room, and John worked through
the course, and a few extra lessons, but, after all, found Fielding's
art was not what he wanted. Some sketches exist, showing the influence
of the spongy style; but his characteristic way of work remained for him
to devise for himself.

At the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1836 Turner showed the first striking
examples of his later style in "Juliet and her Nurse," "Mercury and
Argus," and "Rome from Mount Aventine." The strange idealism, the
unusualness, the mystery, of these pictures, united with evidence of
intense significance and subtle observation, appealed to young Ruskin as
it appealed to few other spectators. Public opinion regretted this
change in its old favourite, the draughtsman of Oxford colleges, the
painter of shipwrecks and castles. And _Blackwood's Magazine_, which the
Ruskins, as Edinburgh people and admirers of Christopher North, read
with respect, spoke about Turner, in a review of the picture-season,
with that freedom of speech which Scotch reviewers claim as a heritage
from the days of Jeffrey. Young Ruskin at once dashed off an answer.

The critic had found that Turner was "out of nature"; Ruskin tried to
show that the pictures were full of facts, but treated with poetical
license. The critic pronounced Turner's colour bad, his execution
neglected, and his chiaroscuro childish; in answer to which Ruskin
explained that Turner's reasoned system was to represent light and shade
by the contrast of warm and cold colour, rather than by the opposition
of white and black which other painters used. He denied that his
execution was other than his aims necessitated, and maintained that the