t us take one more glance at the foregrounds
of the old masters, with reference, not to their management of rock,
which is comparatively a rare component part of their foregrounds, but
to the common soil which they were obliged to paint constantly, and
whose forms and appearances are the same all over the world. A steep
bank of loose earth of any kind, that has been at all exposed to the
weather, contains in it, though it may not be three feet high, features
capable of giving high gratification to a careful observer. It is almost
a fac-simile of a mountain slope of soft and decomposing rock; it
possesses nearly as much variety of character, and is governed by laws
of organization no less rigid. It is furrowed in the first place by
undulating lines, by the descent of the rain, little ravines, which are
cut precisely at the same slope as those of the mountain, and leave
ridges scarcely less graceful in their contour, and beautifully sharp in
their chiselling. Where a harder knot of ground or a stone occurs, the
earth is washed from beneath it, and accumulates above it, and there we
have a little precipice connected by a sweeping curve at its summit with
the great slope, and casting a sharp dark shadow; where the soil has
been soft, it will probably be washed away underneath until it gives
way, and leaves a jagged, hanging, irregular line of fracture; and all
these circumstances are explained to the eye in sunshine with the most
delicious clearness; every touch of shadow being expressive of some
particular truth of structure, and bearing witness to the symmetry into
which the whole mass has been reduced. Where this operation has gone on
long, and vegetation has assisted in softening the outlines, we have our
ground brought into graceful and irregular curves, of infinite variety,
but yet always so connected with each other, and guiding to each other,
that the eye never feels them as _separate_ things, nor feels inclined
to count them, nor perceives a likeness in one to the other; they are
not repetitions of each other, but are different parts of one system.
Each would be imperfect without the one next to it.

Sec. 13. The ground of Teniers.

Now it is all but impossible to express distinctly the particulars
wherein this fine character of curve consists, and to show in definite
examples, what it is which makes one representation right, and another
wrong. The ground of Teniers for instance, in No. 139 in the Dulwich
Galler