mezzotint engraving than by any of the ordinary expedients of line.
Take them all in all, they form the most valuable series of marine
studies which have as yet been published from his works; and I hope
that they may be of some use hereafter in recalling the ordinary aspect
of our English seas, at the exact period when the nation had done its
utmost in the wooden and woven strength of ships, and had most perfectly
fulfilled the old and noble prophecy--

"They shall ride
Over ocean wide,
With hempen bridle, and horse of tree."
_Thomas of Ercildoune._

I.--DOVER.

[Illustration: DOVER.]

This port has some right to take precedence of others, as being that
assuredly which first exercises the hospitality of England to the
majority of strangers who set foot on her shores. I place it first
therefore among our present subjects; though the drawing itself, and
chiefly on account of its manifestation of Turner's faulty habit of
local exaggeration, deserves no such pre-eminence. He always painted,
not the place itself, but his impression of it, and this on steady
principle; leaving to inferior artists the task of topographical detail;
and he was right in this principle, as I have shown elsewhere, when the
impression was a genuine one; but in the present case it is not so. He
has lost the real character of Dover Cliffs by making the town at their
feet three times lower in proportionate height than it really is; nor is
he to be justified in giving the barracks, which appear on the left
hand, more the air of a hospice on the top of an Alpine precipice, than
of an establishment which, out of Snargate street, can be reached,
without drawing breath, by a winding stair of some 170 steps; making the
slope beside them more like the side of Skiddaw than what it really is,
the earthwork of an unimportant battery.

This design is also remarkable as an instance of that restlessness which
was above noticed even in Turner's least stormy seas. There is nothing
tremendous here in scale of wave, but the whole surface is fretted and
disquieted by torturing wind; an effect which was always increased
during the progress of the subjects, by Turner's habit of scratching out
small sparkling lights, in order to make the plate "bright," or
"lively."[Q] In a general way the engravers used to like this, and,
as far as they were able, would tempt Turner farther into the practice,
whic