truths of space in every individual part of their picture by the
thousand. But this they did not care for; it saved them trouble; they
reached their grand end, imitative effect; they thrust home just at the
places where the common and careless eye looks for imitation, and they
attained the broadest and most faithful appearance of truth of tone
which art can exhibit.

Sec. 6. General falsehood of such a system.

But they are prodigals, and foolish prodigals, in art; they lavish their
whole means to get one truth, and leave themselves powerless when they
should seize a thousand. And is it indeed worthy of being called a
truth, when we have a vast history given us to relate, to the fulness of
which neither our limits nor our language are adequate, instead of
giving all its parts abridged in the order of their importance, to omit
or deny the greater part of them, that we may dwell with verbal fidelity
on two or three? Nay, the very truth to which the rest are sacrificed is
rendered falsehood by their absence, the relation of the tree to the sky
is marked as an impossibility by the want of relation of its parts to
each other.

Sec. 7. The principle of Turner in this respect.

Turner starts from the beginning with a totally different principle. He
boldly takes pure white (and justly, for it is the sign of the most
intense sunbeams) for his highest light, and lampblack for his deepest
shade; and between these he makes every degree of shade indicative of
separate degree of distance,[16] giving each step of approach, not the
exact difference in pitch which it would have in nature, but a
difference bearing the same proportion to that which his sum of possible
shade bears to the sum of nature's shade; so that an object half way
between his horizon and his foreground, will be exactly in half tint of
force, and every minute division of intermediate space will have just
its proportionate share of the lesser sum, and no more. Hence where the
old masters expressed one distance, he expresses a hundred; and where
they said furlongs, he says leagues. Which of these modes of procedure
be most agreeable with truth, I think I may safely leave the reader to
decide for himself. He will see in this very first instance, one proof
of what we above asserted, that the deceptive imitation of nature is
inconsistent with real truth; for the very means by which the old
masters attained the apparent accuracy of tone which is so satisfying to
th