is divided into two ridges of enormous swell,
not high, nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like
the lifting of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the
storm. Between these two ridges, the fire of the sunset falls along the
trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the
intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold and bathes like blood.
Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by which the swell
of the sea is restlessly divided, lift themselves in dark, indefinite,
fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along
the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but three or four
together in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength
of the swell compels or permits them; leaving between them treacherous
spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like
fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully
dyed from above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds,
which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the
reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flying. Purple and
blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of
the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of
death upon the guilty[69] ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the
sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with
condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and
mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight,--and cast far along the
desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous
sea.

Sec. 40. Its united excellences and perfection as a whole.

I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any single
work, I should choose this. Its daring conception--ideal in the highest
sense of the word--is based on the purest truth, and wrought out with the
concentrated knowledge of a life; its color is absolutely perfect, not
one false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every
square inch of canvas is a perfect composition; its drawing as accurate
as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its tones as
true as they are wonderful;[70] and the whole picture dedicated to the
most sublime of subjects and impressions--(completing thus the perfect
system of all truth, which we have shown to be formed by Turner's
works