TURNER I wonder which of you, if seeing this picture for the first time, will realize that you are looking at the old familiar Thames?
It would seem rather to be some place unknown except in dreams, some phantasy of the human spirit that we ourselves could never hope to see.

And yet, in fact, this is what Turner actually did see one evening as he was sailing down the Thames to Greenwich with a party of friends.

Suddenly there loomed up before his eyes the great hull of the _Temeraire_, famous in the fight against the fleet of Napoleon at Trafalgar, and so full of memories of glorious battle, that it was always spoken of by sailors as the _Fighting Temeraire_.

At last, its work over as a battleship, or even as a training-ship for cadets, dragged by a doughty little steam-tug, it was headed for its last resting-place in the Thames, to be broken up for old timber.

As the _Temeraire_ hove in sight through the mist, a fellow-painter said to Turner: 'Ah, what a subject for a picture!' and so indeed it proved.