me degree of artistic
power, and it will then see shadows distinctly, but only the more
vigorous of them. Cultivate it still farther, and it will see light
within light, and shadow within shadow, and will continually refuse to
rest in what it had already discovered, that it may pursue what is more
removed and more subtle, until at last it comes to give its chief
attention and display its chief power on gradations which to an
untrained faculty are partly matters of indifference, and partly
imperceptible. That these subtle gradations have indeed become matters
of primal importance to it, may be ascertained by observing that they
are the things it will last part with, as the object retires into
distance; and that, though this distance may become so great as to
render the real nature of the object quite undiscernible, the gradations
of light upon it will not be lost.

Sec. 7. For instance, Fig. 1, on the opposite page, Plate 26, is a
tolerably faithful rendering of the look of a wall tower of a Swiss town
as it would be seen within some hundred yards of it. Fig. 2 is (as
nearly as I can render it) a facsimile of Turner's actual drawing of
this tower, at a presumed distance of about half a mile. It has far less
of intelligible delineation, either of windows, cornices, or tiles; but
intense care has still been given to get the pearly roundness of the
side, and the exact relations of all the tones of shade. And now, if
Turner wants to remove the tower still farther back, he will gradually
let the windows and stones all disappear together, before he will quit
his shadows and delicately centralized rays. At Fig. 3 the tower is
nearly gone, but the pearly roundness of it and principal lights of it
are there still. At Fig. 4 (Turner's ultimate condition in distance)
the essence of the thing is quite unintelligible; we cannot answer for
its being a tower at all. But the gradations of light are still there,
and as much pains have been taken to get them as in any of the other
instances. A vulgar artist would have kept something of the form of the
tower, expressing it by a few touches; and people would call it a clever
drawing. Turner lets the tower melt into air, but still he works half an
hour or so over those delicate last gradations, which perhaps not many
people in England besides himself can fully see, as not many people can
understand the final work of a great mathematician. I assume, of course,
in this example, that the tower,