ated by workers: if the reader
can himself draw a bit of natural precipice in Yoredale shale, and then
copy a bit of the etching, he will find some measure of the difference
between Turner's work and other people's, and not otherwise; although,
without any such labor, he may at once perceive that there is a
difference, and a wide one,--so wide, that I have literally nothing to
compare the Turnerian work with in previous art. Here, however, Fig. 84,
is a rock of Claude's (Liber Veritatis, No. 91, on the left hand), which
is something of the shape of Turner's, and professes to be crested in
like manner with copse-wood. The reader may "compare" as much as he
likes, or can, of it.

[Illustration: FIG. 85.]

Sec. 35. In fact, as I said some time ago, the whole landscape of Claude
was nothing but a more or less softened continuance of the old
traditions of missal-painting, of which I gave examples in the previous
volume. The general notion of rock which may be traced in the earliest
work, as Figs. 1 and 2 in Plate +10+ Vol. III. is of an upright mass cut
out with an adze; as art advances, the painters begin to perceive
horizontal stratification, and, as in all the four other examples of
that plate, show something like true rendering of the fracture of rocks
in vertical joints with superimposed projecting masses. They insist on
this type, thinking it frowning or picturesque, and usually exhibit it
to more advantage by putting a convent, hermitage, or castle on the
projection of the crag. In the blue backgrounds of the missals the
projection is often wildly extravagant; for instance, the MS.
Additional, 11,696 Brit. Mus., has all its backgrounds composed of blue
rocks with towers upon them, of which Fig. 85 is a characteristic
example (magnified in scale about one-third; but, I think, rather
diminished in extravagance of projection). It is infinitely better drawn
than Claude's rocks ever are, in the expression of cleavage; but
certainly somewhat too bold in standing. Then, in more elaborate work,
we get conditions of precipice like Fig. 3 in Plate +10+, which, indeed,
is not ill-drawn in many respects; and the book from which it is taken
shows other evidences of a love of nature sufficiently rare at the
period, though joined quaintly with love of the grotesque: for instance,
the writer, giving an account of the natural productions of Saxony,
illustrates his chapter with a view of the salt mines; he represents
the brine-spring