Soon it came out that John Ruskin was one of the executors named in the will, with a legacy of _L20_ for a mourning ring:--"Nobody can say you were paid to praise," says his father.

It was gossipped that he was expected to write Turner's biography--"five years' work for you," says the old man, full of plans for gathering material.

But when one scandal after another reached his ears, he changed his tone, and suggested dropping personal details, and giving a "Life of his Art," in the intended third and final volume of "Modern Painters." Something of the sort was done in the Edinburgh Lectures and at the close of vol.v.
of "Modern Painters": and the official life was left to Walter Thornbury, with which Mr.Ruskin perhaps did not wish to interfere.

But he collected a mass of then unpublished material about Turner, which goes far to prove that the kindly view he took of the strange man's morbid and unhappy life was not without justification.

At the time, so many legal complications developed that Ruskin was advised to resign his executorship; later on he was able to fulfil its duties as he conceived them, in arranging Turner's sketches for the National Gallery.
Others of his old artist-friends were now passing away.