o in advance without anticipating all my other
illustrations. Nevertheless, some points which I have to note respecting
the meaning of the sky are so intimately connected with the subjects we
have just been examining, that I cannot properly defer their
consideration to another place; and I shall state them, therefore, in
the next chapter, afterwards proceeding, in the order I adopted in the
first volume, to examine the beauty of mountains, water, and vegetation.

FOOTNOTES

[32] Art and Artists in England, vol. ii., p. 151. The other
characteristics which Dr. Waagen discovers in Turner are, "such a
looseness of treatment, such a total want of truth, as I never
before met with."

[33] And yet, all these intricacies will produce for it another
whole; as simple and natural as the child's first conception of the
thing; only more comprehensive. See above, Chap. III., Sec. 21.

[34] Compare Vol. III. Chap. XIV. Sec. 13. Touching the exact degree in
which ignorance or incapacity is mingled with wilful conventionalism
in this drawing, we shall inquire in the chapters on Vegetation.

[35] Only the _main_ lines: the outer sprays have had no pains taken
with them, as I am going to put some leaves on them in next volume.

[36] It is quite impossible to facsimile good free work. Both Turner
and Harding suffer grievously in this plate.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FIRMAMENT.

Sec. 1. The task which we now enter upon, as explained in the close of the
preceding chapter, is the ascertaining as far as possible what the
proper effect of the natural beauty of different objects _ought_ to be
on the human mind, and the degree in which this nature of theirs, and
true influence, have been understood and transmitted by Turner.

I mean to begin with the mountains, for the sake of convenience in
illustration; but, in the proper order of thought, the clouds ought to
be considered first; and I think it will be well, in this intermediate
chapter, to bring to a close that line of reasoning by which we have
gradually, as I hope, strengthened the defences around the love of
mystery which distinguishes our modern art; and to show, on final and
conclusive authority, what noble things these clouds are, and with what
feeling it seems to be intended by their Creator that we should
contemplate them.

Sec. 2. The account given of the stages of Creation in the first chapter of
Genesis, is in every respe