But not for these is my admiration, sir,
to-day. My frying-pan (to be vulgar) is for
other fish. I am spell-bound by the canvasses
of another painter, newly gone to his reward—
taken too soon (though his years had come to
those that can be counted but as labour and
sorrow) from us and Art—whose birth and
death were both of modern date; but who is
surely as old a master as any of the Sampsons
of the brush—as any strong Gyas or strong
Cloanthus of the easel and maulstick here
present. Proximate to where Claude
Lorraine is toying with the Queen of Sheba, stands
Joseph William Mallard Turner a-building of
Carthage with bricks of gold and silver and
jewels. And that builder against the Frenchman
for any stake you like to mention!

Few of us there be but have laughed, long
and loudly, at the monstrous splodges of
colour the marvellous man sent of late years
to the Royal Academy exhibitions, and bade
us, authoritatively, reverence as pictures.
What jokes we made! what humorous
censures we passed upon those eccentric performances!
Now that the Master is dead, the evil
that he did lies buried with him. For all his
faults, and eccentricities, and madnesses (if
you will) we will proudly and lovingly
remember our Englishman as the greatest
landscape-painter the world ever saw. Such,
at least, be my remembrance of Joseph Turner,
the barber's son, who was the Milton of his
art—who painted the "Shipwreck" and the
"Building of Carthage,"—who sleeps the great
sound sleep now in the Cathedral Church of
Saint Paul, but who lives, and holds his own
against all comers among the greatest of the
ancient masters in our Gallery.

And, filling mine eyes with the Building of
Carthage, the nascent palaces, and growing
terraces, and embryo fountains, I turn, in
thought, from Carthage built to Carthage
ruined. Musing upon the delended city,
slowly, sadly rise before me the shadows of
its greatness—visions of its magnificence, its
decadence, its various fortunes and woes, its
headlong fall, its utter erasure and blotting
out from the roll of cities.

Stand, Pilgrim, on the summit of Byrsa, and
gaze upon the ruins of Carthage, for it hath
its ruins yet: yea, to this day, in spite of
railroads and submarine telegraphs and
tourists from Peckham Rye poking about the
Levant in the steam-boats of the Peninsular
and Oriental Steam Navigation Company.
The ruins of Carthage resemble those of
Sparta: meagre in data, too shattered to
confirm, too dilapidated to elucidate, they yet
cover a considerable space. Gaze, Pilgrim
(shading thine eyes from the hot African sun,
though the year is yet no older than its
second month), fig-trees and olive-trees
spread forth their earliest leaves; the
haughty angelica, the scrolled acanthus, form
tufts of verdure scattered among starred and
shapeless masses—rocks almost—of feverish
marble, that once were temples, palaces,
columns, amphitheatres. Far away in the
distance gaze upon the Isthmus, upon the double
sea, upon the hazy islands, upon smiling plains,
blue lakes and delicately rose-and-purpled
mountains, upon fields, forests, ships,
aqueducts, Moorish villages, Moslem hermitages,
minarets, and the white houses of Tunis the
whilom piratical. Silent as are these hot
plains (for the sun is high in the heaven, and
few Tunisians care to stir abroad in the day-
heat), legions of shadows of the men and
women who have lived their course of life in
Carthage flit solemnly across the landscape:
Dido, Sophronisba, and the noble spouse of
Asdrubal; Hannibal and Marius; the Roman
revenge, and the Carthaginian women weaving
their hair into bow-strings. These broad
Afric lands stand no need of sowing with
dragon's teeth for an army of recollections to
start up armed and appointed. Come the
mailed men—the serried legions that fought
at Scipio's bidding. Comes the shadow of
Utica and of Gate's house. Alas! that it
should be but a shadow. Caprœa yet can
show the ruins of the palace of Tiberius; but
of Cato's dwelling there remains nor stock,
nor stone, nor vestige. Come the days of
the barbarians—come rapine and slaughter,
and ruined houses and choked-up fountains—
come the Vandals, the terrible Vandals; and,
no less terrible though more polished,
Belisarius and his Byzantine hordes. Come the
cruel Moors with their Sultan, and where his
horse's hoof has touched the earth there grows
no more grass. Lastly comes, Pilgrim, ravening
for Saracen blood, hot upon their track,
Louis of France, called the Saint, the LAST
CRUSADER. An you would know how it
sped with him in his last crusade, and how
the Angel of Death struck him amid the
ruins of Carthage, you shall hear in this my
reverie.

In God's year 1269, Louis the Twelfth of
France is no longer young. Cares of state
and private sorrows, fierce wars and pious
vigils, have combined, too, with years to
enfeeble his health and bow his erst stalwart
frame. He cannot sit his charger for any
length of time. His two-handed sword and
massive triangular shield are burdens to him.
His casque weighs heavily on his brow. Wearisome
are the strong shirt of mail, the massive
greaves, and cuissons, and jamb-plates. Saint
Louis grows old and weak. But his soul is
strong, and yearns as vigorously as ever (piety
prompting) for the redemption of the Holy
Land from the miscreant Paynims. His will
is, now, in the November of his life, to go
beyond sea once more, and do battle for