dy
alluded to:--

"But rays of light,
Now suddenly diverging from the orb,
Retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled
By the dense air, shot upwards to the crown
Of the blue firmament--aloft--and wide:
And multitudes of little floating clouds,
Ere we, who saw, of change were conscious, pierced
Through their ethereal texture, had become
Vivid as fire,--Clouds separately poised,
Innumerable multitude of forms
Scattered through half the circle of the sky;
And giving back, and shedding each on each,
With prodigal communion, the bright hues
Which from the unapparent fount of glory
They had imbibed, and ceased not to receive.
That which the heavens displayed the liquid deep
Repeated, but with unity sublime."

Sec. 10. The intense and constant study of them by Turner.

There is but one master whose works we can think of while we read this;
one alone has taken notice of the neglected upper sky; it is his
peculiar and favorite field; he has watched its every modification, and
given its every phase and feature; at all hours, in all seasons, he has
followed its passions and its changes, and has brought down and laid
open to the world another apocalypse of heaven.

There is scarcely a painting of Turner's, in which serenity of sky and
intensity of light are aimed at together, in which these clouds are not
used, though there are not two cases in which they are used altogether
alike. Sometimes they are crowded together in masses of mingling light,
as in the Shylock; every part and atom sympathizing in that continuous
expression of slow movement which Shelley has so beautifully touched:--

"Underneath the young gray dawn
A multitude of dense, white fleecy clouds,
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains,
_Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind_."

At other times they are blended with the sky itself, felt only here and
there by a ray of light calling them into existence out of its misty
shade, as in the Mercury and Argus; sometimes, where great repose is to
be given, they appear in a few detached, equal, rounded flakes, which
seem to hang motionless, each like the shadow of the other, in the deep
blue of the zenith, as in the Acro-Corinth; sometimes they are scattered
in fiery flying f