I have etched the portion of the picture which includes this passage, on page 221, on its own scale, including the whole couloir above the gallery, and the gallery itself, with the rocks beside it.[77] And now, if the reader will look back to [Plate 20], which is the outline of the real scene, he will have a perfect example, in comparing the two, of the operation of invention of the highest order on a given subject. I should recommend him to put a piece of tracing paper over the etching, [Plate 37], and with his pen to follow some of the lines of it as carefully as he can, until he feels their complexity, and the redundance of the imaginative power which amplified the simple theme, furnished by the natural scene, with such detail; and then let him observe what great mountain laws Turner has been striving to express in all these additions.
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| J. M. W. Turner. | J. Ruskin. |
| 37. Crests of the Slaty Crystallines. | |
§ 31. The cleavages which govern the whole are precisely the same as those of the Aiguille Bouchard, only wrought into grander combinations. That the reader may the better distinguish them, I give the leading lines coarsely for reference in [Fig. 70], opposite. The cleavages and lines of force are the following.
| Fig. 70. |
1. A B and associated lines a b, a b, &c., over the whole plate. True beds or cleavage beds (g h in Aiguille Bouchard, [Plate 34]); here, observe, closing in retiring perspective with exquisite subtlety, and giving the great unity of radiation to the whole mass.
2. D E and associated lines d e, d e, over all the plate. Cross cleavage, the second in Aiguille Bouchard; straight and sharp. Forming here the series of crests at B and D.
3. r s, r s. Counter-crests, closely corresponding to counter-fracture, the third in Aiguille Bouchard.
4. m n, m n, &c., over the whole. Writhing aqueous lines falling gradually into the cleavages. Fifth group in Aiguille Bouchard. The starchy cleavage is not seen here, it being not generally characteristic of the crests, and present in the Bouchard only accidentally.