ures, nor a mile
from which the artist may not receive instruction; the district
immediately about Sens being perhaps the most valuable from the grandeur
of its lines of poplars and the unimaginable finish and beauty of the
tree forms in the two great avenues without the walls. Of this kind of
beauty Turner was the first to take cognizance, and he still remains the
only, but in himself the sufficient painter of French landscape. One of
the most beautiful examples is the drawing of trees engraved for the
Keepsake, now in the possession of B. G. Windus, Esq.; the drawings made
to illustrate the scenery of the Rivers of France supply instances of
the most varied character.

The artist appears, until very lately, rather to have taken from
Switzerland thoughts and general conceptions of size and of grand form
and effect to be used in his after compositions, than to have attempted
the seizing of its actual character. This was beforehand to be expected
from the utter physical impossibility of rendering certain effects of
Swiss scenery, and the monotony and unmanageableness of others. The
Valley of Chamounix in the collection of Walter Fawkes, Esq., I have
never seen; it has a high reputation; the Hannibal passing the Alps in
its present state exhibits nothing but a heavy shower and a crowd of
people getting wet; another picture in the artist's gallery of a
land-fall is most masterly and interesting, but more daring than
agreeable. The Snowstorm, avalanche, and inundation, is one of his
mightiest works, but the amount of mountain drawing in it is less than
of cloud and effect; the subjects in the Liber Studiorum are on the
whole the most intensely felt, and next to them the vignettes to
Rogers's Poems and Italy. Of some recent drawings of Swiss subject I
shall speak presently.

Sec. 42. His rendering of Italian character still less successful. His
large compositions how failing.

The effect of Italy upon his mind is very puzzling. On the one hand, it
gave him the solemnity and power which are manifested in the historical
compositions of the Liber Studiorum, more especially the Rizpah, the
Cephalus, the scene from the Fairy Queen, and the Aesacus and Hesperie:
on the other, he seems never to have entered thoroughly into the spirit
of Italy, and the materials he obtained there were afterwards but
awkwardly introduced in his large compositions.

Of these there are very few at all worthy of him; none but the Liber
St