xhausted of its
moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as
described above, and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of
finely divided water, but with boiling mist; imagine also the low
rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often
seen them; whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to
wave; and finally conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch
of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in
precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all
this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no
distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon,
nor any landmark or natural evidence of position is left; that the
heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you see no
farther than you could see through a cataract....

But, I think, the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and, if
so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave
Ship,[42] the chief Academy picture of the Exhibition in 1840. It is a
sunset on the Atlantic, after prolonged storm; but the storm is
partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain-clouds are moving in
scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole
surface of sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of
enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the
whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by deep drawn breath after
the torture of the storm. Between these two ridges the fire of the
sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but
glorious light, the intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold,
and bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing
waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided, lift
themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint
and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not
rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully
and furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits
them; leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling
water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now flashing back
the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with the
indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them
in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the reckless waves the
added mot