hts were always placed beautifully; and though the plate,
after its "touching," generally looked as if ingeniously salted out of
her dredging-box by an artistical cook, the salting was done with a
spirit which no one else can now imitate. But the original power of the
work was forever destroyed. If the reader will look carefully beneath
the white touches on the left in this sea, he will discern dimly the
form of a round nodding hollow breaker. This in the early state of the
plate is a gaunt, dark, angry wave, rising at the shoal indicated by the
buoy;--Mr. Lupton has fac-similed with so singular skill the scratches
of the penknife by which Turner afterwards disguised this breaker, and
spoiled his picture, that the plate in its present state is almost as
interesting as the touched proof itself; interesting, however, only as a
warning to all artists never to lose hold of their first conception.
They may tire even of what is exquisitely right, as they work it out,
and their only safety is in the self-denial of calm completion.

[V] Not, let me say with all due honor to him, the careful and
skillful engraver of these plates, who has been much more tormented
than helped by Turner's alterations.

VIII.--FALMOUTH.

[Illustration: FALMOUTH.]

This is one of the most beautiful and best-finished plates of the
series, and Turner has taken great pains with the drawing; but it is
sadly open to the same charges which were brought against the Dover, of
an attempt to reach a false sublimity by magnifying things in themselves
insignificant. The fact is that Turner, when he prepared these drawings,
had been newly inspired by the scenery of the Continent; and with his
mind entirely occupied by the ruined towers of the Rhine, he found
himself called upon to return to the formal embrasures and unappalling
elevations of English forts and hills. But it was impossible for him to
recover the simplicity and narrowness of conception in which he had
executed the drawing of the Southern Coast, or to regain the innocence
of delight with which he had once assisted gravely at the drying of
clothes over the limekiln at Comb Martin, or penciled the woodland
outlines of the banks of Dartmouth Cove. In certain fits of prosaic
humorism, he would, as we have seen, condemn himself to delineation of
the parades of a watering-place; but the moment he permitted himself to
be enthusiastic, vaster imaginations crowded in upon him: to modify