lower boughs in cedars and such
other spreading trees.

[Illustration: FIG. 18.]

[Illustration: FIG. 19.]

106. Fig. 20 will give you a good idea of the simplest way in which
these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed; if you copy it
carefully, you will be surprised to find how the touches all group
together, in expressing the plumy toss of the tree branches, and the
springing of the bushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the
ground: note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers
of the little mound on the left.[23] It is facsimiled from an etching of
Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the use of pure
and firm lines; it will also show you how the particular action in
foliage, or anything else to which you wish to direct attention, may be
intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees are made to look
more tall and upright still, because their line is continued below by
the figure of the farmer with his stick; and the rounded bushes on the
bank are made to look more rounded because their line is continued in
one broad sweep by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These
figures are placed entirely with this object, as we shall see more fully
hereafter when we come to talk about composition; but, if you please,
we will not talk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you
about the beautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing to do with
composition, but only with fact, and the brief and expressive
representation of fact. But there will be no harm in your looking
forward, if you like to do so, to the account, in Letter III. of the
"Law of Radiation," and reading what is said there about tree growth:
indeed it would in some respects have been better to have said it here
than there, only it would have broken up the account of the principles
of composition somewhat awkwardly.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.]

107. Now, although the lines indicative of action are not always quite
so manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention will soon
enable you to see that there are such lines in everything. In an old
house roof, a bad observer and bad draughtsman will only see and draw
the spotty irregularity of tiles or slates all over; but a good
draughtsman will see all the bends of the under timbers, where they are
weakest and the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the
run of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, a