ement of them, that
which we should get if we were looking at them from beneath. Hence we
see the dark sides of leaves hanging over a stream, in their reflection,
though we see the light sides above, and all objects and groups of
objects are thus seen in the reflection under different lights, and in
different positions with respect to each other from those which they
assume above; some which we see on the bank being entirely lost in their
reflection, and others which we cannot see on the bank brought into
view. Hence nature contrives never to repeat herself, and the surface of
water is not a mockery, but a new view of what is above it. And this
difference in what is represented, as well as the obscurity of the
representation, is one of the chief sources by which the sensation of
surface is kept up in the reality. The reflection is not so remarkable,
it does not attract the eye in the same degree when it is entirely
different from the images above, as when it mocks them and repeats them,
and we feel that the space and surface have color and character of their
own, and that the bank is one thing and the water another. It is by not
making this change manifest, and giving underneath a mere duplicate of
what is seen above, that artists are apt to destroy the essence and
substance of water, and to drop us through it.

Sec. 8. Illustrated from the works of Turner.

Sec. 9. The boldness and judgment shown in the observance of it.

Now one instance will be sufficient to show the exquisite care of Turner
in this respect. On the left-hand side of his Nottingham, the water (a
smooth canal) is terminated by a bank fenced up with wood, on which,
just at the edge of the water, stands a white sign-post. A quarter of a
mile back, the hill on which Nottingham Castle stands rises steeply
nearly to the top of the picture. The upper part of this hill is in
bright golden light, and the lower in very deep gray shadow, against
which the white board of the sign-post is seen entirely in light relief,
though, being turned from the light, it is itself in delicate middle
tint, illumined only on the edge. But the image of all this in the
canal is very different. First, we have the reflection of the piles of
the bank, sharp and clear, but under this we have not what we see above
it, the dark _base_ of the hill, (for this being a quarter of a mile
back, we could not see over the fence if we were looking from below,)
but the golden summit of the hi