in the manner of the Liber
Studiorum. This kind of study is very convenient for carrying away
pieces of effect which depend not so much on refinement as on
complexity, strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden effects of sky,
etc.; and it is most useful as a safeguard against any too servile or
slow habits which the minute copying may induce in you; for although the
endeavor to obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and dash for
display's sake, is as baneful as it is despicable; there are a velocity
and a dash which not only are compatible with perfect drawing, but
obtain certain results which cannot be had otherwise. And it is
perfectly safe for you to study occasionally for speed and decision,
while your continual course of practice is such as to insure your
retaining an accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such
circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you will find
yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration than negligence.

[Illustration: FIG. 21.]

117. Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of landscape
scenery you are passing through, to get into the habit of making
memoranda of the shapes of shadows. You will find that many objects of
no essential interest in themselves, and neither deserving a finished
study, nor a Duereresque one, may yet become of singular value in
consequence of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it happens
often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important
element than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 21, seen
within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement of timbers
to which the shadows are owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's
distance, in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen; and a good
painter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large spot, and
the crossed bars, of pure gray; wholly without indication of their
cause, as in Fig. 22 _a_; and if we saw it at still greater distances,
it would appear, as in Fig. 22 _b_ and _c_, diminishing at last to a
strange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of gray on the light
hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his distances,
continually reduces his objects to these shadow abstracts; and the
singular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused
touches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough
accuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.]