ngers. You may
therefore study Harding's drawing, and take pleasure in it;[229] and you
may properly admire the dexterity which applies the habit of the hand
so well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory: but you
must never copy it, otherwise your progress will be at once arrested.
The utmost you can ever hope to do, would be a sketch in Harding's
manner, but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given his life's toil
to gain his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at
besides drawing. You would also incapacitate yourself from ever
understanding what truly great work was, or what Nature was; but by the
earnest and complete study of facts, you will gradually come to
understand the one and love the other more and more, whether you can
draw well yourself or not.

I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law above stated,
that of mystery; the law, namely, that nothing is ever seen perfectly,
but only by fragments, and under various conditions of obscurity.[230]
This last fact renders the visible objects of Nature complete as a type
of the human nature. We have, observe, first, Subordination; secondly,
Individuality; lastly, and this not the least essential character,
Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson in every serrated point and
shining vein which escape or deceive our sight among the forest leaves,
how little we may hope to discern clearly, or judge justly, the rents
and veins of the human heart; how much of all that is round us, in men's
actions or spirits, which we at first think we understand, a closer and
more loving watchfulness would show to be full of mystery, never to be
either fathomed or withdrawn.

[Illustration: FIG. 26.]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.]

The expression of this final character in landscape has never been
completely reached by any except Turner; nor can you hope to reach it at
all until you have given much time to the practice of art. Only try
always when you are sketching any object with a view to completion in
light and shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see
definitely; _preparing_ for the after development of the forms by
chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for a future
arrangement of superimposed light and shade which renders the etchings
of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as examples and so peculiar. The
character exists more or less in them exactly in proportion to the pains
that Turner has taken. Thus