of water over any surface _universally_,
whether falling, as in rain, or sweeping, as a torrent, induces
convexity of form. But when we have rocks _in situ_, as here, exposed at
their edges to the violent action of an eddy, that eddy will cut a vault
or circular space for itself, (as we saw on a large scale with the high
waterfall,) and we have a concave curve interrupting the general
contours of the rock. And thus Turner (while every edge of his masses is
rounded, and, the moment we rise above the level of the water, all is
convex) has interrupted the great contours of his strata with concave
curves, precisely where the last waves of the torrent have swept against
the exposed edges of the beds. Nothing could more strikingly prove the
depth of that knowledge by which every touch of this consummate artist
is regulated, that universal command of subject which never acts for a
moment on anything conventional or habitual, but fills every corner and
space with new evidence of knowledge, and fresh manifestation of
thought.

Sec. 26. Turner's drawing of detached blocks of weathered stone.

The Lower Fall of the Tees, with the chain-bridge, might serve us for an
illustration of all the properties and forms of vertical beds of rock,
as the upper fall has of horizontal; but we pass rather to observe, in
detached pieces of foreground, the particular modulation of parts which
cannot be investigated in the grand combinations of general mass.

The blocks of stone which form the foreground of the Ulleswater are, I
believe, the finest example in the world of the finished drawing of
rocks which have been subjected to violent aqueous action. Their
surfaces seem to palpitate from the fine touch of the waves, and every
part of them is rising or falling in soft swell or gentle depression,
though the eye can scarcely trace the fine shadows on which this
chiselling of the surface depends. And with all this, every block of
them has individual character, dependent on the expression of the
angular lines of which its contours were first formed, and which is
retained and felt through all the modulation and melting of the
water-worn surface. And what is done here in the most important part of
the picture, to be especially attractive to the eye, is often done by
Turner with lavish and overwhelming power, in the accumulated debris of
a wide foreground, strewed with the ruin of ages, as, for instance, in
the Junction of the Greta and Tees, where h