od's sake, must be
melancholy work enough for many a living creature. All men have felt it
so; and this grinding at the mill, whether it be breeze or soul that is
set to it, we cannot much rejoice in. Turner has no joy of his mill. It
shall be dark against the sky, yet proud, and on the hill-top; not
ashamed of its labor, and brightened from beyond, the golden clouds
stooping over it, and the calm summer sun going down behind, far away,
to his rest.

Sec. 12. Now in all this observe how the higher condition of art (for I
suppose the reader will feel, with me, that Turner's _is_ the highest)
depends upon largeness of sympathy. It is mainly because the one painter
has communion of heart with his subject, and the other only casts his
eyes upon it feelinglessly, that the work of the one is greater than
that of the other. And, as we think farther over the matter, we shall
see that this is indeed the eminent cause of the difference between the
lower picturesque and the higher. For, in a certain sense, the lower
picturesque ideal is eminently a _heartless_ one: the lover of it seems
to go forth into the world in a temper as merciless as its rocks. All
other men feel some regret at the sight of disorder and ruin. He alone
delights in both; it matters not of what. Fallen cottage--desolate
villa--deserted village--blasted heath--mouldering castle--to him, so
that they do but show jagged angles of stone and timber, all are sights
equally joyful. Poverty, and darkness, and guilt, bring in their several
contributions to his treasury of pleasant thoughts. The shattered
window, opening into black and ghastly rents of wall, the foul rag or
straw wisp stopping them, the dangerous roof, decrepit floor and stair,
ragged misery or wasting age of the inhabitants,--all these conduce,
each in due measure, to the fulness of his satisfaction. What is it to
him that the old man has passed his seventy years in helpless darkness
and untaught waste of soul? The old man has at last accomplished his
destiny, and filled the corner of a sketch, where something of an
unshapely nature was wanting. What is it to him that the people fester
in that feverish misery in the low quarter of the town, by the river?
Nay, it is much to him. What else were they made for? what could they
have done better? The black timbers, and the green water, and the
soaking wrecks of boats, and the torn remnants of clothes hung out to
dry in the sun;--truly the fever-struck creatu