e perspective of the solid objects so reversed.

If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, take a mirror,
lay it horizontally on the table, put some books and papers upon it, and
draw them and their reflections; moving them about, and watching how
their reflections alter, and chiefly how their reflected colors and
shades differ from their own colors and shades, by being brought into
other oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more important
character in water-painting than mere difference in form.

145. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you will see shadows
on the bottom, or on the surface, continually modifying the reflections;
and in a clear mountain stream, the most wonderful complications of
effect resulting from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it,
mingling with the aspect of the stones themselves seen through the
water. Do not be frightened at the complexity; but, on the other hand,
do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything
that you see, and distinguishing each component part of the effect.
There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted
always by refraction, so that, if the general structure of the stone
shows straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will
be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the part of the
stone above the water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen
through it, so that you can hardly tell which is which; and wherever the
reflection is darkest, you will see through the water best,[37] and
_vice versa_. Then the real shadow of the stone crosses both these
images, and where that shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective,
and where the sunshine falls, you will see more of the surface of the
water, and of any dust or motes that may be floating on it: but whether
you are to see, at the same spot, most of the bottom of the water, or of
the reflection of the objects above, depends on the position of the eye.
The more you look down into the water, the better you see objects
through it; the more you look along it, the eye being low, the more you
see the reflection of objects above it. Hence the color of a given space
of surface in a stream will entirely change while you stand still in the
same spot, merely as you stoop or raise your head; and thus the colors
with which water is painted are an indication of the position of the
spectator, and connected inse