his
old conception in the least, was to exaggerate it; the mount of
Pendennis is lifted into rivalship with Ehrenbreitstein, and hardworked
Falmouth glitters along the distant bay, like the gay magnificence of
Resina or Sorrento.

This effort at sublimity is all the more to be regretted, because it
never succeeds completely. Shade, or magnify, or mystify as he may, even
Turner cannot make the minute neatness of the English fort appeal to us
as forcibly as the remnants of Gothic wall and tower that crown the
Continental crags; and invest them as he may with smoke or sunbeam, the
details of our little mounded hills will not take the rank of cliffs of
Alp, or promontories of Apennine; and we lose the English simplicity,
without gaining the Continental nobleness.

I have also a prejudice against this picture for being disagreeably
noisy. Wherever there is something serious to be done, as in a battle
piece, the noise becomes an element of the sublimity; but to have great
guns going off in every direction beneath one's feet on the right, and
all round the other side of the castle, and from the deck of the ship of
the line, and from the battery far down the cove, and from the fort on
the top of the hill, and all for nothing, is to my mind eminently
troublesome.

The drawing of the different wreaths and depths of smoke, and the
explosive look of the flash on the right, are, however, very wonderful
and peculiarly Turneresque; the sky is also beautiful in form, and the
foreground, in which we find his old regard for washerwomen has not
quite deserted him, singularly skillful. It is curious how formal the
whole picture becomes if this figure and the gray stones beside it are
hidden with the hand.

IX.--SIDMOUTH.

[Illustration: SIDMOUTH.]

This drawing has always been interesting to me among Turner's sea
pieces, on account of the noble gathering together of the great wave on
the left,--the back of a breaker, just heaving itself up, and provoking
itself into passion, before its leap and roar against the beach. But the
enjoyment of these designs is much interfered with by their monotony: it
is seriously to be regretted that in all but one the view is taken from
the sea; for the spectator is necessarily tired by the perpetual rush
and sparkle of water, and ceases to be impressed by it. It would be
felt, if this plate were seen alone, that there are few marine paintings
in which the weight and heaping of the sea are g