even in the work
of a novice. Among those who most fully appreciate and render the
qualities of space and surface in calm water, perhaps Copley Fielding
stands first. His expanses of windless lake are among the most perfect
passages of his works; for he can give surface as well as depth, and
make his lake look not only clear, but, which is far more difficult,
lustrous. He is less dependent than most of our artists upon
reflections; and can give substance, transparency, and extent, where
another painter would be reduced to paper; and he is exquisitely refined
in his expression of distant breadth, by the delicate line of ripple
interrupting the reflection, and by aerial qualities of color. Nothing,
indeed, can be purer or more refined than his general feeling of lake
sentiment, were it not for a want of simplicity--a fondness for pretty,
rather than impressive color, and a consequent want of some of the
higher expression of repose.

Sec. 2. The calm rivers of De Wint, J. Holland, etc.

Sec. 3. The character of bright and violent falling water.

Sec. 4. As given by Nesfield.

Hundreds of men might be named, whose works are highly instructive in
the management of calm water. De Wint is singularly powerful and
certain, exquisitely bright and vigorous in color. The late John Varley
produced some noble passages. I have seen, some seven years ago, works
by J. Holland, which were, I think, as near perfection as water-color
can be carried--for _bona fide_ truth, refined and finished to the
highest degree. But the power of modern artists is not brought out until
they have greater difficulties to struggle with. Stand for half an hour
beside the fall of Schaffhausen, on the north side where the rapids are
long, and watch how the vault of water first bends, unbroken, in pure,
polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract,
covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick--so swift that
its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts over it
like a falling star; and how the trees are lighted above it under all
their leaves, at the instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the
hollows of that foam burn with green fire like so much shattering
chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white flash,
a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, bursting in
the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how,
through the curdling wreaths