before stated, of a vertical plate
of glass, with what might be seen through it, drawn on its surface.
Let a vertical plate of glass be taken, and wherever it be placed,
whether the sun be at its side or at its centre, the reflection will
always be found in a vertical line under the sun, parallel with the
side of the glass. The pane of any window looking to sea is all the
apparatus necessary for this experiment, and yet it is not long
since this very principle was disputed with me by a man of much
taste and information, who supposed Turner to be wrong in drawing
the reflection straight down at the side of his picture, as in his
Lancaster Sands, and innumerable other instances.

[63] In the last edition of this work was the following passage:--"I
wish Ruysdael had painted one or two rough seas. I believe if he had
he might have saved the unhappy public from much grievous
victimizing, both in mind and pocket, for he would have shown that
Vandevelde and Backhuysen were not quite sea-deities." The writer
has to thank the editor of Murray's Handbook of Painting in Italy
for pointing out the oversight. He had passed many days in the
Louvre before the above passage was written, but had not been in the
habit of pausing long anywhere except in the last two rooms,
containing the pictures of the Italian school. The conjecture,
however, shows that he had not ill-estimated the power of Ruysdael;
nor does he consider it as in anywise unfitting him for the task he
has undertaken, that for every hour passed in galleries he has
passed days on the seashore.

[64] I am here, of course, speaking of the treatment of the subject
as a landscape only; many mighty examples of its conception occur
where the sea, and all other adjuncts, are entirely subservient to
the figures, as with Raffaelle and M. Angelo.

CHAPTER II.

OF WATER, AS PAINTED BY THE MODERNS.

Sec. 1. General power of the moderns in painting quiet water. The lakes of
Fielding.

There are few men among modern landscape painters, who cannot paint
quiet water at least suggestively, if not faithfully. Those who are
incapable of doing this, would scarcely be considered artists at all;
and anything like the ripples of Canaletto, or the black shadows of
Vandevelde, would be looked upon as most unpromising,