rock of its beautiful
lichens to bare slate, with one quartz vein running up through it; he
has quieted the river into a commonplace stream; he has given, of all
the rich vegetation, only one cluster of quite uninteresting leaves
and a clump of birches with ragged trunks. Yet, observe, I have told
you of it, he has put into one scene the spirit of Scotland.

[Illustration: DUMBLANE ABBEY.

From the painting by Turner.]

37. Similarly, those of you who in your long vacations have ever
stayed near Dumblane will be, I think, disappointed in no small degree
by this study of the abbey, for which I showed you the sketch at last
Lecture. You probably know that the oval window in its west end is one
of the prettiest pieces of rough thirteenth-century carving in the
kingdom; I used it for a chief example in my lectures at Edinburgh;
and you know that the lancet windows, in their fine proportion and
rugged masonry, would alone form a study of ruined Gothic masonry of
exquisite interest.

Yet you find Turner representing the lancet window by a few bare oval
lines like the hoop of a barrel; and indicating the rest of the
structure by a monotonous and thin piece of outline, of which I was
asked by one of yourselves last term, and quite naturally and rightly,
how Turner came to draw it so slightly--or, we may even say, so badly.

38. Whenever you find Turner stopping short, or apparently failing in
this way, especially when he does the contrary of what any of us would
have been nearly sure to do, then is the time to look for your main
lesson from him. You recollect those quiet words of the strongest of
all Shakespeare's heroes, when any one else would have had his sword
out in an instant:

"Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them ...
Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it
Without a prompter."[8]

[Footnote 8: "Othello," I. 2.]

Now you must always watch keenly what Turner's _cue_ is. You will see
his hand go to his hilt fast enough, when it comes. Dumblane Abbey is
a pretty piece of building enough, it is true; but the virtue of the
whole scene, and meaning, is not in the masonry of it. There is
much better masonry and much more wonderful ruin of it elsewhere;
Dumblane Abbey--tower and aisles and all--would go under one of the
arches of buildings such as there are in the world. Look at what
Turner will do when his cue is masonry,--in the Coliseum. What the
execution of that drawing is