Ruskin, in his pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism, has drawn such a comparison between Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites as to make them only different manifestations of the same spirit in Art. Nothing, it seems to us, could be more mistaken than this; for, in all that concerns either the end of Art or its paths of approach, its purposes or its methods, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites are diametrically opposed. Turner was intensely subjective,--the Pre-Raphaelites are as intensely objective. There is no evidence whatever in Turner's works that he ever made the slightest attempt to reproduce Nature in such guise as the Pre-Raphaelites paint her in; on the contrary, the early drawings of Turner are as inattentive to absolute truth of detail as they could well be. His course of study was one of memory. He commenced by expressing in his drawing such palpable facts and truths as were most strongly retained, and in which he conveyed the great impression of the scene, with the most complete indifference to all facts not essential to the telling of his story. From this, as his memory grew stronger and his perception more minute and comprehensive, he widened his circle of ideas and facts, always working from feeling rather than from what Nature set before him. His mind thus sifting his perceptions, retaining always only those which constituted the essential features of the impression, and with a distinctness proportioned to their relative importance, there necessarily resulted a subjective unity like that of an absolute creation. The Pre-Raphaelites, on the other hand, endeavor to paint everything that they see just as they see it; and doing this without permitting the slightest liberty of choice to their feeling, where they _have_ feeling, their Art is, of course, in all its early stages, destitute of that singleness of purpose which marked Turner's works from the beginning. Turner felt an emotion before Nature, and used the objects from which he had received the emotion as symbols to convey it again;--the Pre-Raphaelites look at Nature as full of beautiful facts, and, like children amid the flowers, they gather their hands full, "indifferent of worst or best," and when their hands are full, crowd their laps and bosoms, and even drop some already picked, to make room for others which beckon from their stems,--insatiable with beauty. This is delightful,--but childlike, nevertheless. Turner was, above all, an artist; with him Art stood first, facts secondary;--with the Pre-Raphaelites it is the reverse; it is far less important to them that their facts should be broadly stated and in keeping in their pictures, than that they should be there and comprehensible. To him a fact that was out of keeping was a nuisance, and he treated it as such; while any falsehood that was in keeping was as unhesitatingly admitted, if he needed it to strengthen the impression of his picture. Turner would put a rainbow by the side of the sun, if he wanted one there;--a Pre-Raphaelite would paint with a stop-watch, to get the rainbow in the right place. In brief, Turner's was the purely subjective method of study, a method fatal to any artist of the opposite quality of mind;--that of the Pre-Raphaelites is the purely objective, absolutely enslaving to a subjective artist, and no critic capable of following out the first principles of Art to logical deductions could confound the two. The one leads to a sentimental, the other to a philosophic Art; and the only advice to be given to an artist as to his choice of method is, that, until he knows that he can trust himself in the liberty of the subjective, he had better remain in the discipline of the objective. The fascination of the former, once felt, forbids all return to the latter. If he be happy in the Pre-Raphaelite fidelity, let him thank the Muse and tempt her no farther.