the desolate sea,
Stanfield of the blue, open, boundless ocean. Arrange all this in your
mind, observe the perfect truth of it in all its parts, compare it with
the fragmentary falsities of the ancients, and then, come with me to
Turner.

FOOTNOTES

[65] I ought before to have alluded to the works of the late G.
Robson. They are a little disagreeable in execution, but there is a
feeling of the character of _deep_ calm water in them quite
unequalled, and different from the works and thoughts of all other
men.

CHAPTER III.

OF WATER, AS PAINTED BY TURNER.

Sec. 1. The difficulty of giving surface to smooth water.

Sec. 2. Is dependent on the structure of the eye, and the focus by which
the reflected rays are perceived.

I believe it is a result of the experience of all artists, that it is
the easiest thing in the world to give a certain degree of depth and
transparency to water; but that it is next thing to impossible, to give
a full impression of surface. If no reflection be given--a ripple being
supposed--the water looks like lead: if reflection be given, it in nine
cases out of ten looks _morbidly_ clear and deep, so that we always go
down _into_ it, even when the artist most wishes us to glide _over_ it.
Now, this difficulty arises from the very same circumstance which
occasions the frequent failure in effect of the best drawn foregrounds,
noticed in Section II. Chapter III., the change, namely, of focus
necessary in the eye in order to receive rays of light coming from
different distances. Go to the edge of a pond, in a perfectly calm day,
at some place where there is duckweed floating on the surface,--not
thick, but a leaf here and there. Now, you may either see in the water
the reflection of the sky, or you may see the duckweed; but you cannot,
by any effort, see both together. If you look for the reflection, you
will be sensible of a sudden change or effort in the eye, by which it
adapts itself to the reception of the rays which have come all the way
from the clouds, have struck on the water, and so been sent up again to
the eye. The focus you adopt is one fit for great distance; and,
accordingly, you will feel that you are looking down a great way under
the water, while the leaves of the duckweed, though they lie upon the
water at the very spot on which you are gazing so intently, are felt
only as a vague, uncerta