may sound strange in most
ears; but this is chiefly because we are not in the habit of analyzing
and dwelling upon those difficult and daring passages of the modern
master which do not at first appeal to our ordinary notions of truth,
owing to his habit of uniting two, three, or even more separate tones in
the same composition. In this also he strictly follows nature, for
wherever climate changes, tone changes, and the climate changes with
every 200 feet of elevation, so that the upper clouds are always
different in tone from the lower ones, these from the rest of the
landscape, and in all probability, some part of the horizon from the
rest. And when nature allows this in a high degree, as in her most
gorgeous effects she always will, she does not herself impress at once
with intensity of tone, as in the deep and quiet yellows of a July
evening, but rather with the magnificence and variety of associated
color, in which, if we give time and attention to it, we shall gradually
find the solemnity and the depth of twenty tones instead of one. Now in
Turner's power of associating cold with warm light, no one has ever
approached, or even ventured into the same field with him. The old
masters, content with one simple tone, sacrificed to its unity all the
exquisite gradations and varied touches of relief and change by which
nature unites her hours with each other. They gave the warmth of the
sinking sun, overwhelming all things in its gold; but they did not give
those gray passages about the horizon where, seen through its dying
light, the cool and the gloom of night gather themselves for their
victory. Whether it was in them impotence or judgment, it is not for me
to decide. I have only to point to the daring of Turner in this respect,
as something to which art affords no matter of comparison, as that in
which the mere attempt is, in itself, superiority. Take the evening
effect with the Temeraire. That picture will not, at the first glance,
deceive as a piece of actual sunlight; but this is because there is in
it more than sunlight, because under the blazing veil of vaulted fire
which lights the vessel on her last path, there is a blue, deep,
desolate hollow of darkness, out of which you can hear the voice of the
night wind, and the dull boom of the disturbed sea; because the cold,
deadly shadows of the twilight are gathering through every sunbeam, and
moment by moment as you look, you will fancy some new film and faintness
of