lf
more and more sensitive to these higher qualities by the discipline
which you generally give to your character, and this especially with
regard to the choice of incidents; a kind of composition in some sort
easier than the artistical arrangements of lines and colors, but in
every sort nobler, because addressed to deeper feelings.

242. For instance, in the "Datur Hora Quieti," the last vignette to
Rogers's Poems, the plow in the foreground has three purposes. The first
purpose is to meet the stream of sunlight on the river, and make it
brighter by opposition; but any dark object whatever would have done
this. Its second purpose is, by its two arms, to repeat the cadence of
the group of the two ships, and thus give a greater expression of
repose; but two sitting figures would have done this. Its third and
chief, or pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the
vessels also being moored, and having their sails down), to be a type of
human labor closed with the close of day. The parts of it on which the
hand leans are brought most clearly into sight; and they are the chief
dark of the picture, because the tillage of the ground is required of
man as a punishment: but they make the soft light of the setting sun
brighter, because rest is sweetest after toil. These thoughts may never
occur to us as we glance carelessly at the design; and yet their under
current assuredly affects the feelings, and increases, as the painter
meant it should, the impression of melancholy, and of peace.

243. Again, in the "Lancaster Sands," which is one of the plates I have
marked as most desirable for your possession: the stream of light which
falls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in
need of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the
incident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry sea-gull
at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his
feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected
boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of
the sea's advance just as surely as the abandoned plow told us of the
ceased labor of the day.

244. It is not, however, so much in the selection of single incidents of
this kind, as in the feeling which regulates the arrangement of the
whole subject, that the mind of a great composer is known. A single
incident may be suggested by a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto
might