ndicative of that sensibility which was at
the root of all his greatness. Other artists are led away by foreign
sublimities and distant interests; delighting always in that which is
most markedly strange, and quaintly contrary to the scenery of their
homes. But Turner evidently felt that the claims upon his regard
possessed by those places which first had opened to him the joy, and the
labor, of his life, could never be superseded; no Alpine cloud could
efface, no Italian sunbeam outshine, the memory of the pleasant dales
and days of Rokeby and Bolton; and many a simple promontory, dim with
southern olive,--many a low cliff that stooped unnoticed over some alien
wave, was recorded by him with a love, and delicate care, that were the
shadows of old thoughts and long-lost delights, whose charm yet hung
like morning mist above the chanting waves of Wharfe and Greta.

Sec. 29. The first instance, therefore, of Turner's mountain drawing which
I endeavored to give accurately, in this book, was from those shores of
Wharfe which, I believe, he never could revisit without tears; nay,
which for all the latter part of his life, he never could even speak of,
but his voice faltered. We will now examine this instance with greater
care.

It is first to be remembered that in every one of his English or French
drawings, Turner's mind was, in two great instincts, at variance with
itself. The _affections_ of it clung, as we have just seen, to humble
scenery, and gentle wildness of pastoral life. But the _admiration_ of
it was, more than any other artist's whatsoever, fastened on largeness
of scale. With all his heart, he was attached to the narrow meadows and
rounded knolls of England; by all his imagination he was urged to the
reverence of endless vales and measureless hills; nor could any scene be
too contracted for his love, or too vast for his ambition. Hence, when
he returned to English scenery after his first studies in Savoy and
Dauphine, he was continually endeavoring to reconcile old fondnesses
with new sublimities; and, as in Switzerland he chose rounded Alps for
the love of Yorkshire, so in Yorkshire he exaggerated scale, in memory
of Switzerland, and gave to Ingleborough, seen from Hornby Castle, in
great part the expression of cloudy majesty and height which he had seen
in the Alps from Grenoble. We must continually remember these two
opposite instincts as we examine the Turnerian topography of his subject
of Bolton Abbey.