centre to the circumference of a circle. The forms included between
them are the forms of the individual boughs of a fine tree, with all
their ramifications (only the external curve is not a circle, but
more frequently two parabolas--which, I believe, it is in the
oak--or an ellipse.) But each bough of the old masters is
club-shaped, and broadest, not at the outside of the tree, but a
little way towards its centre.

[76] On the other hand, nothing can be more exquisitely ridiculous
than the French illustrations of a second or third-rate order, as
those to the Harmonies of Lamartine.

[77] Of Stanfield's foliage I remember too little to enable me to
form any definite judgment; it is a pity that he so much neglects
this noble element of landscape.

[78] It is true that many of Rembrandt's etchings are merely in
line, but it may be observed that the subject is universally
_conceived_ in light and shade, and that the lines are either merely
guides in the arrangement, or an exquisite indication of the
key-notes of shade, on which the after-system of it is to be
based--portions of fragmentary finish, showing the completeness of
the conception.

CHAPTER II.

GENERAL REMARKS RESPECTING THE TRUTH OF TURNER.

Sec. 1. No necessity of entering into discussion of architectural truth.

We have now arrived at some general conception of the extent of Turner's
knowledge, and the truth of his practice, by the deliberate examination
of the characteristics of the four great elements of landscape--sky,
earth, water, and vegetation. I have not thought it necessary to devote
a chapter to architecture, because enough has been said on this subject
in Part II. Sect. I. Chap. VII.; and its general truths, which are those
with which the landscape painter, as such, is chiefly concerned, require
only a simple and straightforward application of those rules of which
every other material object of a landscape has required a most difficult
and complicated application. Turner's knowledge of perspective probably
adds to his power in the arrangement of every order of subject; but
ignorance on this head is rather disgraceful than knowledge meritorious.
It is disgraceful, for instance, that any man should commit such
palpable and atrocious errors in ordinary perspective as are seen in the
quay in Claude's sea-piece, No. 14, N