rees,
extending to the next river side, where we come to the brow of another
hill, and descend to the city and valley beneath it. Our own valleys in
Northumberland, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Devonshire, are cut in the
same manner through vast extents of elevated land; the scenery which
interests the traveller chiefly, as he passes through even the most
broken parts of those counties, being simply that of the high _banks_
which rise from the shores of the Dart or the Derwent, the Wharfe or the
Tees. In all cases, when these banks are surmounted, the sensation is
one of disappointment, as the adventurer finds himself, the moment he
has left the edge of the ravine, in a waste of softly undulating moor or
arable land, hardly deserving the title of hill country. As we advance
into the upper districts the fact remains still the same, although the
banks to be climbed are higher, the ravines grander, and the
intermediate land more broken. The majesty of an isolated peak is still
comparatively rare, and nearly all the most interesting pieces of
scenery are glens or passes, which, if seen from a height great enough
to command them in all their relations, would be found in reality little
more than trenches excavated through broad masses of elevated land, and
expanding at intervals into the wide basins which are occupied by the
glittering lake or smiling plain.

[Illustration: FIG. 106.]

[Illustration: J. Ruskin. J. H. Le Keux.
47. The Quarries of Carrara.]

Sec. 49. All these facts had been entirely ignored by artists; nay, almost
by geologists, before Turner's time. He saw them at once; fathomed them
to the uttermost, and, partly owing to early association, partly,
perhaps, to the natural pleasure of working a new mine discovered by
himself, devoted his best powers to their illustration, passing by with
somewhat less attention the conditions of broken-summited rock, which
had previously been the only ones known. And if we now look back to his
treatment of the crest of Mont Pilate, in the figure given at the close
of the last chapter, we shall understand better the nature and strength
of the instinct which compelled him to sacrifice the peaked summit, and
to bring the whole mountain within a lower enclosing line. In that
figure, however, the dotted peak interferes with the perception of the
form finally determined upon, which therefore I repeat here (Fig. 106),
as Turner gave it in color. The eye may not at