yet it speaks with too little respect of
symbolism, which is often of the highest use in religious art, and
in some measure is allowable in all art. In the works of almost all
the greatest masters there are portions which are explanatory rather
than representative, and typical rather than imitative; nor could
these be parted with but at infinite loss. Note, with respect to the
present question, the daring black sunbeams of Titian, in his
woodcut of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, and compare here Part
III. Sect. II. Chap. IV. Sec. 18; Chap. V. Sec. 13. And though I believe
that I am right in considering all such symbolism as out of place in
pure landscape, and in attributing that of Claude to ignorance or
inability, and not to feeling, yet I praise Turner not so much for
his absolute refusal to represent the spiky ray about the sun, as
for his perceiving and rendering that which Claude never perceived,
the multitudinous presence of radiating light in the upper sky and
on all its countless ranks of subtile cloud.

CHAPTER II.

OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS:--FIRST, OF THE REGION OF THE CIRRUS.

Sec. 1. Difficulty of ascertaining wherein the truth of clouds consists.

Our next subject of investigation must be the specific character of
clouds, a species of truth which is especially neglected by artists;
first, because as it is within the limits of possibility that a cloud
may assume almost any form, it is difficult to point out and not always
easy to feel, where in error consists; and secondly, because it is
totally impossible to study the forms of clouds from nature with care
and accuracy, as a change in the subject takes place between every touch
of the following pencil, and parts of an outline sketched at different
instants cannot harmonize, nature never having intended them to come
together. Still if artists were more in the habit of sketching clouds
rapidly, and as accurately as possible in the outline, from nature,
instead of daubing down what they call "effects" with the brush, they
would soon find there is more beauty about their forms than can be
arrived at by any random felicity of invention, however brilliant, and
more essential character than can be violated without incurring the
charge of falsehood,--falsehood as direct and definite, though not as
traceable as error in the less varied features of organic