e chariot-and-four driving up them, by the
side of the delicate forms which terminate in threads too fine for the
eye to follow them, and of texture so thin woven that the earliest stars
shine through them? Will you do it with Salvator, and set that volume of
violent and restless manufactory smoke beside those calm and quiet bars,
which pause in the heaven as if they would never leave it more?

Sec. 12. His use of the cirrus in expressing mist.

Now we have just seen how Turner uses the sharp-edged cirri when he aims
at giving great transparency of air. But it was shown in the preceding
chapter that sunbeams, or the appearance of them, are always sharper in
their edge in proportion as the air is more misty, as they are most
defined in a room where there is most dust flying about in it.
Consequently, in the vignette we have been just noticing, where
transparency is to be given, though there is a blaze of light, its beams
are never edged; a tendency to rays is visible, but you cannot in any
part find a single marked edge of a rising sunbeam, the sky is merely
more flushed in one place than another. Now let us see what Turner does
when he wants mist. Turn to the Alps at Daybreak, page 193, in the same
book. Here we have the cirri used again, but now they have no sharp
edges, they are all fleecy and mingling with each other, though every
one of them has the most exquisite indication of individual form, and
they melt back, not till they are lost in exceeding light, as in the
other plate, but into a mysterious, fluctuating, shadowy sky, of which,
though the light penetrates through it all, you perceive every part to
be charged with vapor. Notice particularly the half-indicated forms even
where it is most serene, behind the snowy mountains. And now, how are
the sunbeams drawn? no longer indecisive, flushing, palpitating, every
one is sharp and clear, and terminated by definite shadow; note
especially the marked lines on the upper cloud; finally, observe the
difference in the mode of indicating the figures, which are here misty
and indistinguishable, telling only as shadows, though they are near and
large, while those in the former vignette came clear upon the eye,
though they were so far off as to appear mere points.

Sec. 13. His consistency in every minor feature.

Now is this perpetual consistency in all points, this concentration of
every fact which can possibly bear upon what we are to be told, this
watchfulness of