that nothing is
left for future artists to accomplish in that kind. Some classes of
scenery, as often pointed out in the preceding pages, he was unfamiliar
with, or held in little affection, and out of that scenery, untouched by
him, new motives may be obtained; but of such landscape as his favorite
Yorkshire Wolds, and banks of Rhenish and French hill, and rocky
mountains of Switzerland, like the St. Gothard, already so long dwelt
upon, he has expressed the power in what I believe to be for ever a
central and unmatchable way. I do not say this with positiveness,
because it is not demonstrable. Turner may be beaten on his own
ground--so may Tintoret, so may Shakespeare, Dante, or Homer: but my
_belief_ is that all these first-rate men are lonely men; that the
particular work they did was by them done for ever in the best way; and
that this work done by Turner among the hills, joining the most intense
appreciation of all tenderness with delight in all magnitude, and memory
for all detail, is never to be rivalled, or looked upon in similitude
again.

FOOTNOTES

[88] _Quantity_ of curvature is as measurable as quantity of
anything else; only observe that it depends on the nature of the
line, not on its magnitude; thus, in simple circular curvature, _a
b_, Fig. 96, being the fourth of a large circle, and _b c_ the half
of a smaller one, the quantity of the element of circular curvature
in the entire line _a c_ is three fourths of that in _any_
circle,--the the same as the quantity in the line _e f_.

[Illustration: FIG 96.]

[89] The catenary is not properly a curve capable of infinity, if
its direction does not alter with its length; but it is capable of
infinity, implying such alteration by the infinite removal of the
points of suspension. It entirely corresponds in its effect on the
eye and mind to the infinite curves. I do not know the exact nature
of the apparent curves of suspension formed by a high and weighty
waterfall; they are dependent on the gain in rapidity of descent by
the central current, where its greater body is less arrested by the
air; and I apprehend, are catenary in character, though not in
cause.

[90] I am afraid of becoming tiresome by going too far into the
intricacies of this most difficult subject; but I say "_towards_ the
bottom of the hill," because, when a certain degree of verticality
is reached, a coun