nity, perceives also more difference
between the branches of an oak and a willow than anyone else would; and,
therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the drawings
themselves is the speciality of whatever they represent--the thorough
stiffness of what is stiff, and grace of what is graceful, and vastness
of what is vast; but through and beyond all this, the condition of the
mind of the painter himself is easily enough discoverable by comparison
of a large number of the drawings. It is singularly serene and peaceful:
in itself quite passionless, though entering with ease into the external
passion which it contemplates. By the effort of its will it sympathizes
with tumult or distress, even in their extremes, but there is no tumult,
no sorrow in itself, only a chastened and exquisitely peaceful
cheerfulness, deeply meditative; touched, without loss of its own
perfect balance, by sadness on the one side, and stooping to playfulness
upon the other. I shall never cease to regret the destruction, by fire,
now several years ago, of a drawing which always seemed to me to be the
perfect image of the painter's mind at this period,--the drawing of
Brignal Church near Rokeby, of which a feeble idea may still be gathered
from the engraving (in the Yorkshire series). The spectator stands on
the "Brignal banks," looking down into the glen at twilight; the sky is
still full of soft rays, though the sun is gone, and the Greta glances
brightly in the valley, singing its even-song; two white clouds,
following each other, move without wind through the hollows of the
ravine, and others lie couched on the far away moorlands; every leaf of
the woods is still in the delicate air; a boy's kite, incapable of
rising, has become entangled in their branches, he is climbing to
recover it; and just behind it in the picture, almost indicated by it,
the lowly church is seen in its secluded field between the rocks and the
stream; and around, it the low churchyard wall, and a few white stones
which mark the resting places of those who can climb the rocks no more,
nor hear the river sing as it passes.

There are many other existing drawings which indicate the same character
of mind, though I think none so touching or so beautiful: yet they are
not, as I said above, more numerous than those which express his
sympathy with sublimer or more active scenes; but they are almost always
marked by a tenderness of execution, and have a look of being belo