[represent]ing the vaporous spray taken off wild waves by violent wind. That magnificent effect only takes place on large breakers, and has no appearance of smoke except a little distance; seen near, it is dust. But the Dutch painters cap every little cutting riple with smoke, intending it for foam, and evidently thus representing it because they had not sufficient power over the brush to produce the broken effect of real spray. Their seas, in consequence, have neither frangibility nor brilliancy; they do not break, but evaporate; their foam neither flies, nor sparkles, nor springs, nor wreathes, nor curdles, nay it is not even white, but of a dirty effloresence or exhalation, and their ships are inserted into this singular sea with peculiar want of truth; for, in nature, three circumstances contribute to disguise the water-line upon the wood; where a wave is thin, the colour of the wood is shown a little through it; when a wave is smooth, the colour of the wood is a little reflected upon it; and when a wave is broken, its foam more or less obscures and modifies the line of junction; besides which, the wet wood itself catches some of the light and colour of the sea. Instead of this, the water-line of the Dutch vessels is marked clear and hard all round; the water reflecting nothing, showing nothing through it, and equally defined in edge of foam as in all other parts. Finally, the curves of their waves are not curves of projection, which all sea-lines are, but the undulating lines of ropes, or other tough and connected bodies. Whenever two curves dissimilar in their nature meet in the sea, of course they both break and form an edge; but every kind of curve, catenary or conic, is associated by these painters in most admired disorder, joined indiscriminately by their extremities. This is a point, however, in which it is impossible to argue without going into high mathematics; and even then the nature of particular curves, as given by the brush, would be scarcely demonstrable; and I am therefore less disposed to take much trouble about it, because I think that the persons who are really fond of these works are almost beyond the reach of argument. I can understand why people like Claude, and perceive much in their sensations which is right and legitimate, and which can be appealed to, and I can give them credit for perceiving more in him than I am at present able to perceive; but when I hear of persons honestly admiring Vandevelde or Backhuysen, I think there must be something physically wrong or wanting in their perceptions - at least, I can form no estimate of what their feelings or notions are, and cannot hope for anything of principle or opinion common between us which I can address or understand. The seas of Claude are the finest pieces of water-painting in ancient art. I do not say that I like them, because they appear to me selections of the particular moment when the sea is most insipid and characterless; but I think that they are exceedingly true to the forms and time selected, or, at least, that the fine instances of them are so, of which there are exceeding few. Anything and everything is fathered upon him, and he probably committed many mistakes himself, and was occasionally right rather by accident than by knowledge. Claude and Ruysdael, then, may be considered as the only two men who could paint anything like water in extended spaces, or in action. The great mass of the landscape painters, though they sometimes succeeded in the imitation of a pond or gutter, display, wherever they have space or opportunity to do so, want of feeling in every effort, and want of knowedge in every line."

"Beyond dispute, the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and therefore the noblest ever painted by man, is that of the Slave Ship, the chief Academy picture of the exhibition of 1840. It is a sunset upon the Atlantic, after prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by deepdrawn breath after the torture of the storm. Between these two ridges the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense and lurid splendour which burns like gold and bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits them,