the most wonderful. If we
think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we
have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have
contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into
grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made,
with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had
not seen; then as it exists in the foam of the torrent, in the iris
which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep
crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and
glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best
emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic,
tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this
universal element, for glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow its
eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like trying to paint a soul.

To suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water, to lay on canvas as
much evidence of surface and reflection as may make us understand that
water is meant, is, perhaps, the easiest task of art; and even ordinary
running or falling water may be sufficiently rendered, by observing
careful curves of projection with a dark ground, and breaking a little
white over it, as we see done with judgment and truth by Ruysdael. But
to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give
the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself; to give the
flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision
and grace of the sea wave, so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly
transient, so mountainous in its form, yet so cloudlike in its motion,
with its variety and delicacy of colour, when every ripple and wreath
has some peculiar passage of reflection upon itself alone, and the
radiating and scintillating sunbeams are mixed with the dim hues of
transparent depth and dark rock below--to do this perfectly is beyond
the power of man; to do it even partially has been granted to but one or
two, even of those few who have dared to attempt it....

The fact is that there is hardly a road-side pond or pool which has not
as much landscape _in_ it as above it. It is not the brown, muddy, dull
thing we suppose it to be; it has a heart like ourselves, and in the
bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and the blades of
the shaking grass, and all manner of hues of