me ago, that
the higher the rock the harder). And that nucleus of change at M,
the hinge, as it were, on which all these promontories of upper
crest revolve, is the first or nearest of the evaded stones,
which have determined the course of streams and nod of cliffs
throughout the chain.

Sec. 32. I can well believe that the reader will doubt the possibility of
all this being intended by Turner: and _intended_, in the ordinary
sense, it was not. It was simply seen and instinctively painted,
according to the command of the imaginative dream, as the true Griffin
was, and as all noble things are. But if the reader fancies that the
apparent truth came by mere chance, or that I am imagining purpose and
arrangement where they do not exist, let him be once for all assured
that no man goes through the kind of work which, by this time, he must
be beginning to perceive I _have_ gone through, either for the sake of
deceiving others, or with any great likelihood of deceiving himself. He
who desires to deceive the picture-purchasing public may do so cheaply;
and it is easy to bring almost any kind of art into notice without
climbing Alps or measuring cleavages. But any one, on the other hand,
who desires to ascertain facts, and will refer all art directly to
nature for many laborious years, will not at last find himself an easy
prey to groundless enthusiasms, or erroneous fancies. Foolish people are
fond of repeating a story which has gone the full round of the
artistical world,--that Turner, some day, somewhere, said to somebody
(time, place, or person never being ascertainable), that I discovered in
his pictures things which he did himself not know were there. Turner was
not a person apt to say things of this kind; being generally, respecting
all the movements of his own mind, as silent as a granite crest; and if
he ever did say it, was probably laughing at the person to whom he was
speaking. But he _might_ have said it in the most perfect sincerity;
nay, I am quite sure that, to a certain extent, the case really was as
he is reported to have declared, and that he neither was aware of the
value of the truths he had seized nor understood the nature of the
instinct that combined them. And yet the truth was assuredly
apprehended, and the instinct assuredly present and imperative; and any
artists who try to imitate the smallest portion of his work will find
that no happy chances will, for them, gather