must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides.
Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed with
them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage. Outline them often
with the pen, as you can catch them here and there; one of the chief
uses of doing this will be, not so much the memorandum so obtained as
the lesson you will get respecting the softness of the cloud-outlines.
You will always find yourself at a loss to see where the outline really
is; and when drawn it will always look hard and false, and will
assuredly be either too round or too square, however often you alter it,
merely passing from the one fault to the other and back again, the real
cloud striking an inexpressible mean between roundness and squareness in
all its coils or battlements. I speak at present, of course, only of the
cumulus cloud: the lighter wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot
be outlined--they can only be sketched, like locks of hair, by many
lines of the pen. Firmly developed bars of cloud on the horizon are in
general easy enough, and may be drawn with decision. When you have thus
accustomed yourself a little to the placing and action of clouds, try to
work out their light and shade, just as carefully as you do that of
other things, looking _exclusively_ for examples of treatment to the
vignettes in Rogers's Italy and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum,
unless you have access to some examples of Turner's own work. No other
artist ever yet drew the sky: even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are
conventional. The clouds in the "Ben Arthur," "Source of Arveron," and
"Calais Pier," are among the best of Turner's storm studies; and of the
upper clouds, the vignettes to Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples
as you need.

And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for the
present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be in any haste to
master the contents of my next letter. If you have any real talent for
drawing, you will take delight in the discoveries of natural loveliness,
which the studies I have already proposed will lead you into, among the
fields and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and
single-heartedly you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the
whole, will your progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the
subjects of the following letter at greater length, and in a separate
work addressed to more advanced students; but as there are one or two
things to be sa