ary
drawing of the architect, who gives the principal lines of the design
with delicate clearness and precision, but with no uncertainty or
mystery about them; which mystery being removed, all space and size are
destroyed with it, and we have a drawing of a model, not of a building.
But in the capital lying on the foreground in Turner's Daphne hunting
with Leucippus, we have the perfect truth. Not one jag of the acanthus
leaves is absolutely visible, the lines are all disorder, but you feel
in an instant that all are there. And so it will invariably be found
through every portion of detail in his late and most perfect works.

Sec. 15. Still greater fulness and finish in landscape foregrounds.

But if there be this mystery and inexhaustible finish merely in the more
delicate instances of architectural decoration, how much more in the
ceaseless and incomparable decoration of nature. The detail of a single
weedy bank laughs the carving of ages to scorn. Every leaf and stalk has
a design and tracery upon it,--every knot of grass an intricacy of shade
which the labor of years could never imitate, and which, if such labor
could follow it out even to the last fibres of the leaflets, would yet
be falsely represented, for, as in all other cases brought forward, it
is not clearly seen, but confusedly and mysteriously. That which is
nearness for the bank, is distance for its details; and however near it
may be, the greater part of those details are still a beautiful
incomprehensibility.[29]

Sec. 16. Space and size are destroyed alike by distinctness and by
vacancy.

Hence, throughout the picture, the expression of space and size is
dependent upon obscurity, united with, or rather resultant from,
exceeding fulness. We destroy both space and size, either by the
vacancy, which affords us no measure of space, or by the distinctness,
which gives us a false one. The distance of Poussin, having no
indication of trees, nor of meadows, nor of character of any kind, may
be fifty miles off, or may be five; we cannot tell--we have no measure,
and in consequence, no vivid impression. But a middle distance of
Hobbima's involves a contradiction in terms; it states a distance by
perspective, which it contradicts by distinctness of detail.

Sec. 17. Swift execution best secures perfection of details.

Sec. 18. Finish is far more necessary in landscape than in historical
subjects.

A single dusty roll of Turner's brus