[122] That mist
of early sunbeams in the London dawn crosses, many and many a time, the
clearness of Italian air; and by Thames' shore, with its stranded
barges and glidings of red sail, dearer to us than Lucerne lake or
Venetian lagoon,--by Thames' shore we will die.
With such circumstance round him in youth, let us note what necessary
effects followed upon the boy. I assume him to have had Giorgione's
sensibility (and more than Giorgione's, if that be possible) to colour
and form. I tell you farther, and this fact you may receive trustfully,
that his sensibility to human affection and distress was no less keen
than even his sense for natural beauty--heart-sight deep as eyesight.
Consequently, he attaches himself with the faithfullest child-love to
everything that bears an image of the place he was born in. No matter
how ugly it is,--has it anything about it like Maiden Lane, or like
Thames' shore? If so, it shall be painted for their sake. Hence, to the
very close of life, Turner could endure ugliness which no one else, of
the same sensibility, would have borne with for an instant. Dead brick
walls, blank square windows, old clothes, market-womanly types of
humanity--anything fishy and muddy, like Billingsgate or Hungerford
Market, had great attraction for him; black barges, patched sails, and
every possible condition of fog.
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