jesty of
the whole scene. The vines and melons of the foreground are disorderly,
and its cypresses conventional; in fact, I recollect no instance of
Turner's drawing a cypress except in general terms.

The chief reason of these failures I imagine to be the effort of the
artist to put joyousness and brilliancy of effect upon scenes eminently
pensive, to substitute radiance for serenity of light, and to force the
freedom and breadth of line which he learned to love on English downs
and Highland moors, out of a country dotted by campaniles and square
convents, bristled with cypresses, partitioned by walls, and gone up and
down by steps.

In one of the cities of Italy he had no such difficulties to encounter.
At Venice he found freedom of space, brilliancy of light, variety of
color, massy simplicity of general form; and to Venice we owe many of
the motives in which his highest powers of color have been displayed
after that change in his system of which we must now take note.

Sec. 44. Changes introduced by him in the received system of art.

Among the earlier paintings of Turner, the culminating period, marked by
the Yorkshire series in his drawings, is distinguished by great
solemnity and simplicity of subject, prevalent gloom in light and shade,
and brown in the hue, the drawing manly but careful, the minutiae
sometimes exquisitely delicate. All the finest works of this period are,
I believe, without exception, views, or quiet single thoughts. The
Calder Bridge, belonging to E. Bicknell, Esq., is a most pure and
beautiful example. The Ivy Bridge I imagine to be later, but its rock
foreground is altogether unrivalled and remarkable for its delicacy of
detail; a butterfly is seen settled on one of the large brown stones in
the midst of the torrent. Two paintings of Bonneville, in Savoy, one in
the possession of Abel Allnutt, Esq., the other, and, I think, the
finest, in a collection at Birmingham, show more variety of color than
is usual with him at the period, and are in every respect magnificent
examples. Pictures of this class are of peculiar value, for the larger
compositions of the same period are all poor in color, and most of them
much damaged, but the smaller works have been far finer originally, and
their color seems secure. There is nothing in the range of landscape art
equal to them in their way, but the full character and capacity of the
painter is not in them. Grand as they are in their sobriety, they sti