the dim room and the smoke-laden atmosphere,
there could suddenly have been poured the full glory of a tropical
sunset, reverberated from the sea: How would you have shrunk, blinded,
from its scarlet and intolerable lightnings! What picture in the room
would not have been blackness after it? And why then do you blame Turner
because he dazzles you? Does not the falsehood rest with those who do
_not_? There was not one hue in this whole picture which was not far
below what nature would have used in the same circumstances, nor was
there one inharmonious or at variance with the rest;--the stormy
blood-red of the horizon, the scarlet of the breaking sunlight, the rich
crimson browns of the wet and illumined sea-weed; the pure gold and
purple of the upper sky, and, shed through it all, the deep passage of
solemn blue, where the cold moonlight fell on one pensive spot of the
limitless shore--all were given with harmony as perfect as their color
was intense; and if, instead of passing, as I doubt not you did, in the
hurry of your unreflecting prejudice, you had paused but so much as one
quarter of an hour before the picture, you would have found the sense of
air and space blended with every line, and breathing in every cloud, and
every color instinct and radiant with visible, glowing, absorbing light.

Sec. 10. Necessary discrepancy between the attainable brilliancy of color
and light.

It is to be observed, however, in general, that wherever in brilliant
effects of this kind, we approach to anything like a true statement of
nature's color, there must yet be a distinct difference in the
impression we convey, because we cannot approach her _light_. All such
hues are usually given by her with an accompanying intensity of sunbeams
which dazzles and overpowers the eye, so that it cannot rest on the
actual colors, nor understand what they are; and hence in art, in
rendering all effects of this kind, there must be a want of the ideas of
_imitation_, which are the great source of enjoyment to the ordinary
observer; because we can only give one series of truths, those of color,
and are unable to give the accompanying truths of light, so that the
more true we are in color, the greater, ordinarily, will be the
discrepancy felt between the intensity of hue and the feebleness of
light. But the painter who really loves nature will not, on this
account, give you a faded and feeble image, which indeed may appear to
you to be right