renewal of pleasurable impression: only one useful
thought may be gathered from the very feeling of monotony. At the time
when Turner executed these drawings, his portfolios were full of the
most magnificent subjects--coast and inland,--gathered from all the
noblest scenery of France and Italy. He was ready to realize these
sketches for any one who would have asked it of him, but no consistent
effort was ever made to call forth his powers; and the only means by
which it was thought that the public patronage could be secured for a
work of this kind, was by keeping familiar names before the eye, and
awakening the so-called "patriotic," but in reality narrow and selfish,
associations belonging to well-known towns or watering-places. It is to
be hoped, that when a great landscape painter appears among us again, we
may know better how to employ him, and set him to paint for us things
which are less easily seen, and which are somewhat better worth seeing,
than the mists of the Catwater, or terraces of Margate.

V.--SHEERNESS.

[Illustration: SHEERNESS.]

I look upon this as one of the noblest sea-pieces which Turner ever
produced. It has not his usual fault of over-crowding or over-glitter;
the objects in it are few and noble, and the space infinite. The sky is
quite one of his best: not violently black, but full of gloom and power;
the complicated roundings of its volumes behind the sloop's mast, and
downwards to the left, have been rendered by the engraver with notable
success; and the dim light entering along the horizon, full of rain,
behind the ship of war, is true and grand in the highest degree. By
comparing it with the extreme darkness of the skies in the Plymouth,
Dover, and Ramsgate, the reader will see how much more majesty there is
in moderation than in extravagance, and how much more darkness, as far
as sky is concerned, there is in gray than in black. It is not that the
Plymouth and Dover skies are false,--such impenetrable forms of
thunder-cloud are amongst the commonest phenomena of storm; but they
have more of spent flash and past shower in them than the less
passionate, but more truly stormy and threatening, volumes of the sky
here. The Plymouth storm will very thoroughly wet the sails, and wash
the decks, of the ships at anchor, but will send nothing to the bottom.
For these pale and lurid masses, there is no saying what evil they may
have in their thoughts, or what they may have to answer for bef