ually
free, and able to escape, if they liked, from the law that rules them,
and yet submitting to it. I will leave our chosen illustrative
composition for a moment to take up another, still more expressive of
this law. It is one of Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais
Sands at sunset; so delicate in the expression of wave and cloud, that
it is of no use for me to try to reach it with any kind of outline in a
woodcut; but the rough sketch, Fig. 33., is enough to give an idea of
its arrangement. The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest
expression of repose, together with the enchanted lulling, monotonous
motion of cloud and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks
after the sun, meeting towards the point in the horizon where he has
set; and the tidal waves gain in winding currents upon the sand, with
that stealthy haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their
edges: just folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece
of ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and clap
their hands, and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing
pointed arches on the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting; but
all this would not have been enough expressed without the line of the
old pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm
waves, and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark
ghosts escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.

I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration of this law
of continuance in the subject chosen for our general illustration. It
was simply that gradual succession of the retiring arches of the bridge
which induced Turner to paint the subject at all; and it was this same
principle which led him always to seize on subjects including long
bridges where-ever he could find them; but especially, observe, unequal
bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather than at the centre.
There is a reason for this, irrespective of general laws of composition,
and connected with the nature of rivers, which I may as well stop a
minute to tell you about, and let you rest from the study of
composition.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.]

All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like to lean a
little on one side: they cannot bear to have their channels deepest in
the middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to sun
themselves upon, and another to get cool