radating light to dark, ending
somewhat sharply against the sky in the rock form to the left. The rich
play of tone that is introduced in the trees and ground, &c., blinds one
at first to the perception of this larger tone motive, but without it
the rich variety would not hold together. Roughly speaking the whole of
this dark frame of tones from the accented point of the trees at the top
to the mass of the rock on the left, may be said to gradate away into
the distance; cut into by the wedge-shaped middle tone of the hills
leading to the horizon.

Breaking across this is a graceful line of figures, beginning on the
left where the mass of rock is broken by the little flight of cupids,
and continuing across the picture until it is brought up sharply by the
light figure under the trees on the right. Note the pretty clatter of
spots this line of figures brings across the picture, introducing light
spots into the darker masses, ending up with the strongly accented light
spot of the figure on the right; and dark spots into the lighter masses,
ending up with the figures of the cupids dark against the sky.

Steadying influences in all this flux of tone are introduced by the
vertical accent of the tree-stem and statue in the dark mass on the
right, by the horizontal line of the distance on the left, the outline
of the ground in the front, and the straight staffs held by some of the
figures.

In the charcoal scribble illustrating this composition I have tried
carefully to avoid any drawing in the figures or trees to show how the
tone-music depends not so much on truth to natural appearances as on
the abstract arrangement of tone values and their rhythmic play.

[Illustration: Diagram XXV.

SHOWING THE PRINCIPLE ON WHICH THE MASS OR TONE RHYTHM IS ARRANGED IN
TURNER'S PICTURE IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF BRITISH ART, "ULYSSES
DERIDING POLYPHEMUS"]

Of course nature contains every conceivable variety of tone-music, but
it is not to be found by unintelligent copying except in rare accidents.
Emerson says, "Although you search the whole world for the beautiful
you'll not find it unless you take it with you," and this is true to a
greater extent of rhythmic tone arrangements.

Turner: "Ulysses deriding Polyphemus."

Turner was very fond of these gradated tone compositions, and carried
them to a lyrical height to which they had never before attained. His
"Ulysses deriding Polyphemus," in the National Gallery of British Art,
is