you will see why Turner has put her death under
this deep shade of trees, the sun withdrawing his last ray; and why he
has put beside her the low type of an animal's pain, a dog licking its
wounded paw.

96. But now, I want you to understand Turner's depth of sympathy
farther still. In both these high mythical subjects the surrounding
nature, though suffering, is still dignified and beautiful. Every line
in which the master traces it, even where seemingly negligent, is
lovely, and set down with a meditative calmness which makes these two
etchings capable of being placed beside the most tranquil work of
Holbein or Duerer. In this "Cephalus" especially, note the extreme
equality and serenity of every outline. But now here is a subject of
which you will wonder at first why Turner drew it at all. It has no
beauty whatsoever, no specialty of picturesqueness; and all its lines
are cramped and poor.

The crampness and the poverty are all intended. This is no longer to
make us think of the death of happy souls, but of the labor of unhappy
ones; at least, of the more or less limited, dullest, and--I must not
say homely, but--unhomely life of the neglected agricultural poor.

It is a gleaner bringing down her one sheaf of corn to an old
watermill, itself mossy and rent, scarcely able to get its stones to
turn. An ill-bred dog stands, joyless, by the unfenced stream; two
country boys lean, joyless, against a wall that is half broken down;
and all about the steps down which the girl is bringing her sheaf, the
bank of earth, flowerless and rugged, testifies only of its malignity;
and in the black and sternly rugged etching--no longer graceful, but
hard, and broken in every touch--the master insists upon the ancient
curse of the earth--"Thorns also and Thistles shall it bring forth to
thee."

97. And now you will see at once with what feeling Turner completes,
in a more tender mood, this lovely subject of his Yorkshire stream, by
giving it the conditions of pastoral and agricultural life; the cattle
by the pool, the milkmaid crossing the bridge with her pail on her
head, the mill with the old millstones, and its gleaming weir as his
chief light led across behind the wild trees.

[Illustration: MILL NEAR GRANDE CHARTREUSE.

From the painting by Turner.]

98. And not among our soft-flowing rivers only; but here among the
torrents of the Great Chartreuse, where another man would assuredly
have drawn the monastery, Turner only