his moment, describing a piece
of Turner's drawing, with the same words by which I describe nature? And
what would one of the old masters have done with such a building as this
in his distance? Either he would only have given the shadows of the
buttresses, and the light and dark sides of the two towers, and two dots
for the windows; or if more ignorant and more ambitious, he had
attempted to render some of the detail, it would have been done by
distinct lines,--would have been broad caricature of the delicate
building, felt at once to be false, ridiculous, and offensive. His most
successful effort would only have given us, through his carefully toned
atmosphere, the effect of a colossal parish church, without one line of
carving on its economic sides. Turner, and Turner only, would follow and
render on the canvas that mystery of decided line,--that distinct,
sharp, visible, but unintelligible and inextricable richness, which,
examined part by part, is to the eye nothing but confusion and defeat,
which, taken as a whole, is all unity, symmetry, and truth.[28]

Sec. 13. In near objects as well as distances.

Sec. 14. Vacancy and falsehood of Canaletto.

Nor is this mode of representation true only with respect to distances.
Every object, however near the eye, has something about it which you
cannot see, and which brings the mystery of distance even into every
part and portion of what we suppose ourselves to see most distinctly.
Stand in the Piazza di St. Marco at Venice, as close to the church as
you can, without losing sight of the top of it. Look at the capitals of
the columns on the second story. You see that they are exquisitely rich,
carved all over. Tell me their patterns: You cannot. Tell me the
direction of a single line in them: You cannot. Yet you see a multitude
of lines, and you have so much feeling of a certain tendency and
arrangement in those lines, that you are quite sure the capitals are
beautiful, and that they are all different from each other. But I defy
you to make out one single line in any one of them. Now go to
Canaletto's painting of this church, in the Palazzo Manfrini, taken from
the very spot on which you stood. How much has he represented of all
this? A black dot under each capital for the shadow, and a yellow one
above it for the light. There is not a vestige nor indication of carving
or decoration of any sort or kind.

Very different from this, but erring on the other side, is the ordin