ke manner encloses the narrow meadows and traceried
cloisters of the Convent of the Reposoir, forms the most striking
feature among all the mountains that border the valley of the Arve
between Cluse and Geneva; while ranges of cliffs presenting precisely
the same typical characters frown above the bridge and fortress of
Mont-Meillan, and enclose, in light blue calm, the waters of the Lake of
Annecy.

[Illustration: FIG. 82.]

Sec. 27. Now, although in many of his drawings Turner acknowledges this
structure, it seems always to be with some degree of reluctance; whereas
he seizes with instant eagerness, and every appearance of contentment,
on forms of mountain which are rounded into banks above, and cut into
precipices below, as is the case in most elevated table-lands; in the
chalk coteaux of the Seine, the basalt borders of the Rhine, and the
lower gorges of the Alps; so that while the most striking pieces of
natural mountain scenery usually rise from the plain under some such
outline as that at _a_, Fig. 82, Turner always formed his composition,
if possible, on such an arrangement as that at _b_.

One reason for this is clearly the greater simplicity of the line. The
simpler a line is, so that it be cunningly varied _within_ its
simplicities, the grander it is; and Turner likes to enclose all his
broken crags by such a line as that at _b_, just as we saw the classical
composer, in our first plate, enclose the griffin's beak with breadth of
wing. Nevertheless, I cannot but attribute his somewhat wilful and
marked rejection of what sublimity there is in the other form, to the
influence of early affections; and sincerely regret that the fascination
exercised over him by memory should have led him to pass so much of his
life in putting a sublimity not properly belonging to them into the
coteaux of Clairmont and Meauves, and the vine terraces of Bingen and
Oberwesel; leaving almost unrecorded the natural sublimity, which he
could never have exaggerated, of the pine-fringed mountains of the
Iscre, and the cloudy diadem of the Mont Vergi.

Sec. 28. In all cases of this kind, it is difficult to say how far harm and
how far good have resulted from what unquestionably has in it something
of both. It is to be regretted that Turner's studies should have been
warped, by early affection, from the Alps to the Rhine; but the fact of
his _feeling_ this early affection, and being thus strongly influenced
by it through his life, is i