assign them
a history according as the hesitating arrow points on the top of yonder
ill-designed London spire.

The most certain and most conquering of all is the south-west wind. You
do not look to the weather-vane to decide what shall be the style of your
greeting to his morning. There is no arbitrary rule of courtesy between
you and him, and you need no arrow to point to his distinctions, and to
indicate to you the right manner of treating such a visitant.

He prepares the dawn. While it is still dark the air is warned of his
presence, and before the window was opened he was already in the room.
His sun--for the sun is his--rises in a south-west mood, with a bloom on
the blue, the grey, or the gold. When the south-west is cold, the cold
is his own cold--round, blunt, full, and gradual in its very strength. It
is a fresh cold, that comes with an approach, and does not challenge you
in the manner of an unauthorised stranger, but instantly gets your leave,
and even a welcome to your house of life. He follows your breath in at
your throat, and your eyes are open to let him in, even when he is cold.
Your blood cools, but does not hide from him.

He has a splendid way with his sky. In his flight, which is that, not of
a bird, but of a flock of birds, he flies high and low at once: high with
his higher clouds, that keep long in the sight of man, seeming to move
slowly; and low with the coloured clouds that breast the hills and are
near to the tree-tops. These the south-west wind tosses up from his soft
horizon, round and successive. They are tinted somewhat like ripe clover-
fields, or like hay-fields just before the cutting, when all the grass is
in flower, and they are, oftener than all other clouds, in shadow. These
low-lying flocks are swift and brief; the wind casts them before him,
from the western verge to the eastern.

Corot has painted so many south-west winds that one might question
whether he ever painted, in his later manner at least, any others. His
skies are thus in the act of flight, with lower clouds outrunning the
higher, the farther vapours moving like a fleet out at sea, and the
nearer like dolphins. In his "Classical Landscape: Italy," the master
has indeed for once a sky that seems at anchor, or at least that moves
with "no pace perceived." The vibrating wings are folded, and Corot's
wind, that flew through so many springs, summers, and Septembers for him
(he was seldom a painter of very