verish intensity of the
minds of the great engravers; and from always fastening on one or two
points of my subject and neglecting the rest.

18. We have seen, then, that every subject is to be taken up first in
its terminal lines, then in its light and shade, then in its color.

First of the terminal lines of landscape, or of drawing in outline.

I think the examples of shell outline in your copying series must
already have made you feel the exact nature of a pure outline, the
difficulty of it, and the value.

But we have now to deal with limits of a more subtle kind.

The outline of any simple solid form, even though it may have complex
parts, represents an actual limit, accurately to be followed. The
outline of a cup, of a shell, or of an animal's limb, has a
determinable course, which your pen or pencil line either coincides
with or does not. You can say of that line, either it is wrong or
right; if right, it is in a measure suggestive, and nobly suggestive
of the character of the object. But the greater number of objects in a
landscape either have outlines so complex that no pencil could follow
them (as trees in middle distance), or they have no actual outline at
all, but a gradated and softened edge; as, for the most part, clouds,
foam, and the like. And even in things which have determinate form,
the outline of that form is usually quite incapable of expressing
their real character.

[Illustration]

19. Here is the most ordinary component of a foreground for instance,
a pleasantly colored stone. Any of its pure outlines are not only
without beauty, but absolutely powerless to give you any notion of its
character, although that character is in itself so interesting, that
here Turner has made a picture of little more than a heap of such
stones, with blue water to oppose their color. In consequence of these
difficulties and insufficiencies, most landscape-painters have been
tempted to neglect outline altogether, and think only of effects of
light or color on masses more or less obscurely defined. They have
thus gradually lost their sense of organic form, their precision of
hand, and their respect for limiting law; in a word, for all the
safeguards and severe dignities of their art. And landscape-painting
has, therefore, more in consequence of this one error than of any
other, become weak, frivolous, and justly despised.

20. Now, if any of you have chanced to notice at the end of my "Queen
of the Air," my s