the orb. It may, perhaps, be somewhat difficult to say
how far it is allowable to represent that kind of ray which is seen by
the dazzled eye. It is very certain that we never look towards a bright
sun without seeing glancing rays issue from it; but it is equally
certain that those rays are no more real existences than the red and
blue circles which we see after having been so dazzled, and that if we
are to represent the rays we ought also to cover our sky with pink and
blue circles. I should on the whole consider it utterly false in
principle to represent the visionary beam, and that we ought only to
show that which has actual existence. Such we find to be the constant
practice of Turner. Even where, owing to interposed clouds, he has beams
appearing to issue from the orb itself, they are broad bursts of light,
not spiky rays; and his more usual practice is to keep all near the sun
in one simple blaze of intense light, and from the first clouds to throw
beams to the zenith, though he often does not permit any appearance of
rays until close to the zenith itself. Open at the 80th page of the
Illustrated edition of Rogers's poems. You have there a sky blazing with
sunbeams; but they all begin a long way from the sun, and they are
accounted for by a mass of dense clouds surrounding the orb itself. Turn
to the 7th page. Behind the old oak, where the sun is supposed to be,
you have only a blaze of undistinguished light; but up on the left, over
the edge of the cloud, on its dark side, the sunbeam. Turn to page
192,--blazing rays again, but all beginning where the clouds do, not one
can you trace to the sun; and observe how carefully the long shadow on
the mountain is accounted for by the dim dark promontory projecting out
near the sun. I need not multiply examples; you will find various
modifications and uses of these effects throughout his works. But you
will not find a single trace of them in the old masters. They give you
the rays issuing from behind black clouds, and because they are a coarse
and common effect which could not possibly escape their observation, and
because they are easily imitated. They give you the spiky shafts
issuing from the orb itself, because these are partially symbolical of
light, and assist a tardy imagination, as two or three rays scratched
round the sun with a pen would, though they would be rays of darkness
instead of light.[30] But of the most beautiful phenomenon of all, the
appearance of the