ny. It is the
change in shape which suggests the idea of their being individually free,
and able to escape, if they like, from the law that rules them, and yet
submitting to it.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.]

201. I will leave our chosen illustrative composition for a moment to
take up another, still more expressive of this law. It is one of
Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset; so
delicate in the expression of wave and cloud, that it is of no use for
me to try to reach it with any kind of outline in a wood-cut; but the
rough sketch, Fig. 33, is enough to give an idea of its arrangement.
The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest expression of
repose, together with the enchanted, lulling, monotonous motion of cloud
and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks after the sun,
meeting towards that point in the horizon where he has set; and the
tidal waves gain in winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy
haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges; just
folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece of ruffled
silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and clap their hands,
and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing pointed
arches on the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting. But all
this would not have been enough expressed without the line of the old
pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves,
and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts
escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.

202. I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration of
this law of continuance in the subject chosen for our general
illustration. It was simply that gradual succession of the retiring
arches of the bridge which induced Turner to paint the subject at all;
and it was this same principle which led him always to seize on subjects
including long bridges wherever he could find them; but especially,
observe, unequal bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather
than at the center. There is a reason for this, irrespective of general
laws of composition, and connected with the nature of rivers, which I
may as well stop a minute to tell you about, and let you rest from the
study of composition.

203. All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like to
lean a little on one side: they cannot bear to have their channels
deepest in the middle,