little white reflection
below; then two larger ships, which, lest his trick should be found out,
Turner puts a dim third between; then below, two fat colliers, leaning
away from each other, and two thinner colliers, leaning towards each
other; and now at last, having doubled everything all round the beach,
he gives one strong single stroke to gather all together, places his
solitary central white figure, and the Calm is complete.

[X] I have mentioned elsewhere that Turner was fond of this subject
of Scarborough, and that there are four drawings of it by him, if
not more, under different effects, having this much common to the
four, that there is always a starfish on the beach.

It is also to be noticed, that not only the definite repetition has a
power of expressing serenity, but even the slight sense of _confusion_
induced by the continual doubling is useful; it makes us feel not well
awake, drowsy, and as if we were out too early, and had to rub our eyes
yet a little, before we could make out whether there were really two
boats or one.

I do not mean that every means which we may possibly take to enable
ourselves to see things double, will be always the most likely to insure
the ultimate tranquillity of the scene, neither that any such artifice
as this would be of avail, without the tender and loving drawing of the
things themselves, and of the light that bathes them; nevertheless the
highest art is full of these little cunnings, and it is only by the help
of them that it can succeed in at all equaling the force of the natural
impression.

One great monotony, that of the successive sigh and vanishing of the
slow waves upon the sand, no art can render to us. Perhaps the silence
of early light, even on the "field dew consecrate" of the grass itself,
is not so tender as the lisp of the sweet belled lips of the clear waves
in their following patience. We will leave the shore as their silver
fringes fade upon it, desiring thus, as far as may be, to remember the
sea. We have regarded it perhaps too often as an enemy to be subdued;
let us, at least this once, accept from it, and from the soft light
beyond the cliffs above, the image of the state of a perfect Human
Spirit,--

"The memory, like a cloudless air,
The conscience, like a sea at rest."

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