you may judge by looking with a
magnifying glass at the ivy and battlements in this, when, also, his
cue is masonry. What then can he mean by not so much as indicating one
pebble or joint in the walls of Dumblane?

[Illustration]

39. I was sending out the other day, to a friend in America, a chosen
group of the _Liber Studiorum_ to form a nucleus for an art
collection at Boston. And I warned my friend at once to guard his
public against the sore disappointment their first sight of these so
much celebrated works would be to them. "You will have to make them
understand," I wrote to him, "that their first lesson will be in
observing not what Turner has done, but what he has not done. These
are not finished pictures, but studies; endeavors, that is to say, to
get the utmost result possible with the simplest means; they are
essentially thoughtful, and have each their fixed purpose, to which
everything else is sacrificed; and that purpose is always
imaginative--to get at the heart of the thing, not at its outside."

40. Now, it is true, there are beautiful lichens at Blair Athol, and
good building at Dumblane; but there are lovely lichens all over the
cold regions of the world, and there is far more interesting
architecture in other countries than in Scotland. The essential
character of Scotland is that of a wild and thinly inhabited rocky
country, not sublimely mountainous, but beautiful in low rock and
light streamlet everywhere; with sweet copsewood and rudely growing
trees. This wild land possesses a subdued and imperfect school of
architecture, and has an infinitely tragic feudal, pastoral, and civic
history. And in the events of that history a deep tenderness of
sentiment is mingled with a cruel and barren rigidity of habitual
character, accurately corresponding to the conditions of climate and
earth.

41. Now I want you especially to notice, with respect to these things,
Turner's introduction of the ugly square tower high up on the left.
Your first instinct would be to exclaim, "How unlucky that was there
at all! Why, at least, could not Turner have kept it out of sight?" He
has quite gratuitously brought it into sight; gratuitously drawn
firmly the three lines of stiff drip-stone which mark its squareness
and blankness. It is precisely that blank vacancy of decoration, and
setting of the meager angles against wind and war, which he wants to
force on your notice, that he may take you thoroughly out of Italy and