e has choked the torrent bed
with a mass of shattered rock, thrown down with the profusion and
carelessness of nature herself; and yet every separate block is a study,
(and has evidently been drawn from nature,) chiselled and varied in its
parts, as if it were to be the chief member of a separate subject; yet
without ever losing, in a single instance, its subordinate position, or
occasioning, throughout the whole accumulated multitude, the repetition
of a single line.

Sec. 27. And of complicated foreground.

I consider cases like these, of perfect finish and new conception,
applied and exerted in the drawing of every member of a confused and
almost countlessly-divided system, about the most wonderful, as well as
the most characteristic passages of Turner's foregrounds. It is done not
less marvellously, though less distinctly, in the individual parts of
all his broken ground, as in examples like these of separate blocks. The
articulation of such a passage as the nearest bank, in the picture we
have already spoken of at so great length, the Upper Fall of the Tees,
might serve us for a day's study, if we were to go into it part by part;
but it is impossible to do this, except with the pencil; we can only
repeat the same general observations, about eternal change and unbroken
unity, and tell you to observe how the eye is kept throughout on solid
and retiring surfaces, instead of being thrown, as by Claude, on flat
and equal edges. You cannot find a single edge in Turner's work; you are
everywhere kept upon round surfaces, and you go back on these you cannot
tell how--never taking a leap, but progressing imperceptibly along the
unbroken bank, till you find yourself a quarter of a mile into the
picture, beside the figure at the bottom of the waterfall.

Sec. 28. And of loose soil.

Finally, the bank of earth on the right of the grand drawing of Penmaen
Mawr, may be taken as the standard of the representation of soft soil
modelled by descending rain; and may serve to show us how exquisite in
character are the resultant lines, and how full of every species of
attractive and even sublime quality, if we only are wise enough not to
scorn the study of them. The higher the mind, it may be taken as a
universal rule, the less it will scorn that which appears to be small or
unimportant; and the rank of a painter may always be determined by
observing how he uses, and with what respect he views the minutiae of
nature. Greatness