omparison of picture with picture; but a single
example will make the principle of it clear to him.

On the whole, the first master of the lower picturesque, among our
living artists, is Clarkson Stanfield; his range of art being, indeed,
limited by his pursuit of this character. I take, therefore, a windmill,
forming the principal subject in his drawing of Brittany, near Dol
(engraved in the Coast Scenery), Fig. 1, Plate +19+, and beside it I
place a windmill, which forms also the principal subject in Turner's
study of the Lock, in the Liber Studiorum. At first sight I dare say the
reader may like Stanfield's best; and there is, indeed, a great deal
more in it to attract liking. Its roof is nearly as interesting in its
ruggedness as a piece of the stony peak of a mountain, with a chalet
built on its side; and it is exquisitely varied in swell and curve.
Turner's roof, on the contrary, is a plain, ugly gable,--a windmill
roof, and nothing more. Stanfield's sails are twisted into most
effective wrecks, as beautiful as pine bridges over Alpine streams; only
they do not look as if they had ever been serviceable windmill sails;
they are bent about in cross and awkward ways, as if they were warped or
cramped; and their timbers look heavier than necessary. Turner's sails
have no beauty about them like that of Alpine bridges; but they have the
exact switchy sway of the sail that is always straining against the
wind; and the timbers form clearly the lightest possible framework for
the canvas,--thus showing the essence of windmill sail. Then the clay
wall of Stanfield's mill is as beautiful as a piece of chalk cliff, all
worn into furrows by the rain, coated with mosses, and rooted to the
ground by a heap of crumbled stone, embroidered with grass and creeping
plants. But this is not a serviceable state for a windmill to be in. The
essence of a windmill, as distinguished from all other mills, is, that
it should turn round, and be a spinning thing, ready always to face the
wind; as light, therefore, as possible, and as vibratory; so that it is
in no wise good for it to approximate itself to the nature of chalk
cliffs.

Now observe how completely Turner has chosen his mill so as to mark this
great fact of windmill nature; how high he has set it; how slenderly he
has supported it; how he has built it all of wood; how he has bent the
lower planks so as to give the idea of the building lapping over the
pivot on which it rests inside;