ow exquisitely irregular and broken are its forms, how sharp nd spray-like; but with all the facts observed which were inted out in Chap. II. of this Section, the convex side to the ind, the sharp edge on that side, the other soft and lost. moke, on the contrary, is an actual substance existing indepenently in the air, a solid opaque body, subject to no absorption or dissipation but that of tenuity. Observe its volumes; there no breaking up nor disappearing here; the wind carries its astic globes before it, but does not dissolve nor break them.* qually convex and void of angles on all sides, they are the exet representatives of the clouds of the old masters, and serve at nce to show the ignorance and falsehood of these latter, and he accuracy of study which has guided Turner to the truth. From this picture we should pass to the Llanthony, which is he rendering of the moment immediately following that given the Jumieges. The shower is here half exhausted, half assed by, the last drops are rattling faintly through the glimhering hazel boughs, the white torrent, swelled by the sudden storm, flings up its hasty jets of springing spray to tiring rain in meet the returning light; and these, as if the heaven regretted what it had given, and were taking t back, pass, as they leap, into vapor, and fall not again, but anish in the shafts of the sunlight -hurrying, fitful, windvoven sunlight-which glides through the thick leaves, and 14. Moment of he Llanthony. * It does not do so until the volumes lose their density by inequality of notion, and by the expansion of the warm air which conveys them. They re then, of course, broken into forms resembling those of clouds. No conception can be formed of this picture from the engraving. It s perhaps the most marvellous piece of execution and of gray color existng, except perhaps the drawing presently to be noticed, Land's End. Nothing else can be set beside it, even of Turner's own works-much less of any other man's. I know no effect more strikingly characteristic of the departure of a storm than the smoking of the mountain torrents. The exhausted air is so thirsty of moisture, that every jet of spray is seized upon by it, and converted into vapor as it springs; and this vapor rises so densely from the surface of the stream as to give it the exact appearance of boiling water. I have seen the whole course of the Arve at Chamonix one line of dense cloud, dissipating as soon as it had risen ten or twelve feet from the surface, but entirely concealing the water from an observer placed above it. paces along the pale rocks like rain; half conquering, half quenched by the very mists which it summons itself from the lighted pastures as it passes, and gathers out of the drooping herbage and from the streaming crags; sending them with messages of peace to the far summits of the yet unveiled mountains whose silence is still broken by the sound of the rushing rain. $15. And of com Coriskin. With this noble work we should compare one of which we can better judge by the engraving-the Loch Coriskin, in the illustrations to Scott, because it introduces us to another and a most remarkable instance of the artist's vast and varied mencing, chosen knowledge. When rain falls on a mountain with peculiar meaning for Loch composed chiefly of barren rocks, their surfaces, being violently heated by the sun, whose most intense warmth always precedes rain, occasion sudden and violent evaporation, actually converting the first shower into steam. Consequently, upon all such hills, on the commencement of rain, white volumes of vapor are instantaneously and universally formed, which rise, are absorbed by the atmosphere, and again descend in rain, to rise in fresh volumes until the surfaces of the hills are cooled. Where there is grass or vegetation, this effect is diminished; where there is foliage it scarcely takes place at all. Now this effect has evidently been especially chosen by Turner for Loch Coriskin, not only because it enabled him to relieve its jagged forms with veiling vapor, but to tell the tale which no pencilling could, the story of its utter absolute barrenness of unlichened, dead, desolated rock : "The wildest glen, but this, can show But here, above, around, below, On mountain, or in glen, Nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower, Nor aught of vegetative power, The wearied eye may ken ; But all its rocks at random thrown, Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone." LORD OF THE ISLES, Canto III. Here, again, we see the absolute necessity of scientific and entire acquaintance with nature, before this great artist can be understood. That which, to the ignorant, is little more than an unnatural and meaningless confusion of steam-like vapor, is to the experienced such a full and perfect expression of the character of the spot, as no means of art could have otherwise given. por in the Land's End. In the Long Ships Lighthouse, Land's End, we have clouds without rain-at twilight-enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but concealing nothing, every outline being visible through their $ 16. The drawing gloom; and not only the outline-for it is easy to of transparent va do this-but the surface. The bank of rocky coast approaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud-not by edges more and more defined, but by a surface more and more unveiled. We have thus the painting, not of a mere transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of whose increasing distance is marked and felt. But the great wonder of the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in pure warm gray, without either blackness or blueness. It is a gloom, dependent rather on the enormous, space and depth indicated, than on actual pitch of color, distant by real drawing, without a grain of blue, dark by real substance, without a stroke of blackness; and with all this, it is not formless, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular, shattered, and indefinitefull of the energy of storm, fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion the fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapor tossed up like men's hands, as in defiance of the tempest, the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks into. the face of the coming darkness; which, beyond all other characters, mark the raised passion of the elements. It is this untraceable, unconnected, yet perpetual form-this $17. The individual character of fulness of character absorbed in the universal enits parts. ergy-which distinguish nature and Turner from all their imitators. To roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and direction, is for the multitude; but to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous separate existence of every wreath of writhing vapor, yet swept away and overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us Flying, and rainy vapors, call out shapes And phantoms from the crags and solid earth, As fast as a musician scatters sounds Out of an instrument," this belongs only to nature and to him. form of swift Coventry. The drawing of Coventry may be particularized as a farther example of this fine suggestion of irregularity and fitfulness, through very constant parallelism of direction, both in rain and § 18. Deep studied clouds. The great mass of cloud, which traverses rain-cloud in the the whole picture, is characterized throughout by severe right lines, nearly parallel with each other, into which every one of its wreaths has a tendency to range itself; but no one of these right lines is actually and entirely parallel to any other, though all have a certain tendency, more or less defined in each, which impresses the mind with the most distinct idea of parallelism. Neither are any of the lines actually straight and unbroken; on the contrary, they are all made up of the most exquisite and varied curves, and it is the imagined line which joins the apices of these-a tangent to them all, which is in reality straight.* They are suggested, not represented, right lines; but the whole volume of cloud is visibly and totally bounded by them; and, in consequence, its whole body is felt to be dragged out and elongated by the force of the tempest which it carries with it, and every one of its wreaths to be (as was before explained) not so much something borne before or by the wind, as the visible form and presence of the wind itself. We could not possibly point out a more magnificent piece of drawing as a contrast to such works of Salvator $ 19. with forms given as that before alluded to (159 Dulwich Gallery). by Salvator. Both are rolling masses of connected cloud; but in Turner's, there is not one curve that repeats another, nor one curve in itself monotonous, nor without character, and yet every part and portion of the cloud is rigidly subjected to the same forward, fierce, inevitable influence of storm. In Salvator's, every curve repeats its neighbor, every curve is monotonous in itself, and yet the whole cloud is curling about hither and Compared *Note especially the dark uppermost outline of the mass. thither, evidently without the slightest notion where it is going to, and unregulated by any general influence whatsoever. I could not bring together two finer or more instructive examples, the one of everything that is perfect, the other of everything that is childish or abominable, in the representation of the same facts. pression of tem cumstances in the But there is yet more to be noticed in this noble sky of Turner's. Not only are the lines of the rolling cloud thus irregular in their parallelism, but those of the falling rain are equally § 20. Entire ex- Varied in their direction, indicating the gusty pest by minute changefulness of the wind, and yet kept so straight touches and cir- and stern in their individual descent, that we are Coventry. not suffered to forget its strength. This impression is still farther enhanced by the drawing of the smoke, which blows every way at once, yet turning perpetually in each of its swirls back in the direction of the wind, but so suddenly and violently, as almost to assume the angular lines of lightning. Farther, to complete the impression, be it observed that all the cattle, both upon the near and distant hill-side, have left off grazing, and are standing stock still and stiff, with their heads. down and their backs to the wind; and finally, that we may be told not only what the storm is, but what it has been, the gutter at the side of the road is gushing in a complete torrent, and particular attention is directed to it by the full burst of light in the sky being brought just above it, so that all its waves are bright with the reflection. a passage of extreme repose. But I have not quite done with this noble picture yet. Impetuous clouds, twisted rain, flickering sunshine, fleeting shadow, gushing water, and oppressed cattle, all speak the same $21. Especially story of tumult, fitfulness, power, and velocity. by contrast with Only one thing is wanted, a passage of repose to contrast with it all, and it is given. High and far above the dark volumes of the swift rain-cloud, are seen on the left, through their opening, the quiet, horizontal, silent flakes of the highest cirrus, resting in the repose of the deep sky. Of all else that we have noticed in this drawing, some faint idea can be formed from the engraving: but not the slightest of the delicate and soft forms of these pausing vapors, and still less of the exquisite depth and palpitating tenderness of the blue with |