takes place of the genuine
light of the present day.

The reader will at once perceive how much trouble this simple principle
will save both the painter and the critic; it at once sets aside the
whole school of common composition, and exonerates us from the labor of
minutely examining any landscape which has nymphs or philosophers in it.

It is hardly necessary for us to illustrate this principle by any
reference to the works of early landscape painters, as I suppose it is
universally acknowledged with respect to them; Titian being the most
remarkable instance of the influence of the native air on a strong mind,
and Claude, of that of the classical poison on a weak one; but it is
very necessary to keep it in mind in reviewing the works of our great
modern landscape painter.

Sec. 39. Its peculiar manifestation in Turner.

I do not know in what district of England Turner first or longest
studied, but the scenery whose influence I can trace most definitely
throughout his works, varied as they are, is that of Yorkshire. Of all
his drawings, I think, those of the Yorkshire series have the most heart
in them, the most affectionate, simple, unwearied, serious finishing of
truth. There is in them little seeking after effect, but a strong love
of place, little exhibition of the artist's own powers or peculiarities,
but intense appreciation of the smallest local minutiae. These drawings
have unfortunately changed hands frequently, and have been abused and
ill treated by picture dealers and cleaners; the greater number of them,
are now mere wrecks. I name them not as instances, but as proofs of the
artist's study in this district; for the affection to which they owe
their excellence, must have been grounded long years before. It is to be
traced, not only in these drawings of the places themselves, but in the
peculiar love of the painter for rounded forms of hills; not but that he
is right in this on general principles, for I doubt not, that, with his
peculiar feeling for beauty of line, his hills would have been rounded
still, even if he had studied first among the peaks of Cadore; but
rounded to the same extent and with the same delight in their roundness,
they would not have been. It is, I believe, to those broad wooded steeps
and swells of the Yorkshire downs that we in part owe the singular
massiveness that prevails in Turner's mountain drawing, and gives it one
of its chief elements of grandeur. Let the reader open the