ss as to diminish his enthusiasm in its presence. Into this
probability I shall have occasion to examine at greater length
hereafter.

The plate of Margate now before us is nearly as complete a duplicate of
the Southern Coast view as the previous plate is of that of Ramsgate;
with this difference, that the position of the spectator is here the
same, but the class of ship is altered, though the ship remains
precisely in the same spot. A piece of old wreck, which was rather an
important object to the left of the other drawing, is here removed. The
figures are employed in the same manner in both designs.

The details of the houses of the town are executed in the original
drawing with a precision which adds almost painfully to their natural
formality. It is certainly provoking to find the great painter, who
often only deigns to bestow on some Rhenish fortress or French city,
crested with Gothic towers, a few misty and indistinguishable touches of
his brush, setting himself to indicate, with unerring toil, every
separate square window in the parades, hotels, and circulating libraries
of an English bathing-place.

The whole of the drawing is well executed, and free from fault or
affectation, except perhaps in the somewhat confused curlings of the
near sea. I had much rather have seen it breaking in the usual
straightforward way. The brilliant white of the piece of chalk cliff is
evidently one of the principal aims of the composition. In the drawing
the sea is throughout of a dark fresh blue, the sky grayish blue, and
the grass on the top of the cliffs a little sunburnt, the cliffs
themselves being left in the almost untouched white of the paper.

VII.--PORTSMOUTH.

[Illustration: PORTSMOUTH.]

This beautiful drawing is a _third_ recurrence by Turner to his earliest
impression of Portsmouth, given in the Southern Coast series. The
buildings introduced differ only by a slight turn of the spectator
towards the right; the buoy is in the same spot; the man-of-war's boat
nearly so; the sloop exactly so, but on a different tack; and the
man-of-war, which is far off to the left at anchor in the Southern Coast
view, is here nearer, and getting up her anchor.

The idea had previously passed through one phase of greater change, in
his drawing of "Gosport" for the England, in which, while the sky of the
Southern Coast view was almost cloud for cloud retained, the interest of
the distant ships of the line had been divided