reen in it; but
such is its atmospheric truth, that the tremulous vibration of the heated
air near the ground seems visible." Again, with regard to a small view
from Hampstead heath. "The sky is of the blue of an English summer day,
with large but not threatening clouds of a silvery whiteness. The distance
is of a deep blue, and the near trees and grass of the freshest green; for
Constable could never consent to patch up the verdure of nature to obtain
warmth. These tints are balanced by a very little warm colour on a road
and gravel-pit in the foreground, a single house in the middle distance,
and the scarlet jacket of a labourer. Yet I know no picture in which the
mid-day heat of summer is so admirably expressed; and were not the eye
refreshed by the shade thrown over a great part of the foreground by some
young trees that border the road, and the cool blue of water near it, one
would wish in looking at it for a parasol, as Fuseli wished for an
umbrella when standing before one of Constable's showers."

It was probably the manner of Constable's execution, as much as any thing
else, which for a time interposed a serious obstacle to his success;
particularly with artists or persons accustomed to attend to the executive
detail of painting. "My pictures will never be popular," he said, "for
they have no handling; but I do not see _handling_ in nature." His aim, in
fact, though we must admit it was not always successful, was to exhibit
art, but not artifice--to efface all traces of the mere mode of
execution--to conceal the handwriting of the painter, and to imitate those
mysterious processes by which nature produces her effects, where all is
shadowy, glimmering, indefinable, yet pregnant with suggestion. In Turner
more than any other modern artist--for in this respect we think he far
excelled Constable--is this alchymy of art carried to perfection. Look
closely at his pictures, and a few patches, dashes, and streaks only are
visible, which seem a mere chaos of colour; but retire to the proper
distance, what magnificent visions grow into shape; how the long avenue
lengthens out for miles; how the sun-clad city brightens on the
mountain--the stream descends _from_ the eye--the distance spreads out
into infinity!--all these apparently unmeaning spots or accidents of
colour, in which it is difficult to detect the work of the hand or pencil
at all, being, in fact, mysterious but speaking hieroglyphics, based on
profound combina