eepened with black,
or warmed with yellow. In one deep reflection of his distant sea, we
catch a trace of the purest blue; but all the rest is palpitating with a
varied and delicate gradation of harmonized tint, which indeed looks
vivid blue as a mass, but is only so by opposition. It is the most
difficult, the most rare thing, to find in his works a definite space,
however small, of unconnected color; that is, either of a blue which has
nothing to connect it with the warmth, or of a warm color which has
nothing to connect it with the grays of the whole; and the result is,
that there is a general system and undercurrent of gray pervading the
whole of his color, out of which his highest lights, and those local
touches of pure color, which are, as I said before, the key-notes of the
picture, flash with the peculiar brilliancy and intensity in which he
stands alone.

Sec. 15. The variety and fulness even of his most simple tones.

Sec. 16. Following the infinite and unapproachable variety of nature.

Intimately associated with this toning down and connection of the colors
actually used, is his inimitable power of varying and blending them, so
as never to give a quarter of an inch of canvas without a change in it,
a melody as well as a harmony of one kind or another. Observe, I am not
at present speaking of this as artistical or desirable in itself, not as
a characteristic of the great colorist, but as the aim of the simple
follower of nature. For it is strange to see how marvellously nature
varies the most general and simple of her tones. A mass of mountain seen
against the light, may, at first, appear all of one blue; and so it is,
blue as a whole, by comparison with other parts of the landscape. But
look how that blue is made up. There are black shadows in it under the
crags, there are green shadows along the turf, there are gray
half-lights upon the rocks, there are faint touches of stealthy warmth
and cautious light along their edges; every bush, every stone, every
tuft of moss has its voice in the matter, and joins with individual
character in the universal will. Who is there who can do this as Turner
will? The old masters would have settled the matter at once with a
transparent, agreeable, but monotonous gray. Many among the moderns
would probably be equally monotonous with absurd and false colors.
Turner only would give the uncertainty--the palpitating, perpetual
change--the subjection of all to a great influenc