[74] De Saussure often refers to these as "assaissements." They occur, here and there, in the aiguilles themselves.
[75] The aqueous curves and roundings on the nearer crest (La Côte) are peculiarly tender, because the gneiss of which it is composed is softer in grain than that of the Bouchard, and remains so even to the very top of the peak, a, in [Fig. 61], where I found it mixed with a yellowish and somewhat sandy quartz rock, and generally much less protogenic than is usual at such elevations on other parts of the chain.
[76] It is worth while noting here, in comparing [Fig. 66] and [Fig. 68], how entirely our judgment of some kinds of art depends upon knowledge, not on feeling. Any person unacquainted with hills would think Claude's right and Titian's ridiculous: but, after inquiring a little farther into the matter, we find Titian's a careless and intense expression of true knowledge, and Claude's a slow and plausible expression of total ignorance.
It will be observed that [Fig. 69] is one of the second order of crests, d, [Fig. 48]. The next instance given is of the first order of crests, c, in the same figure
[77] This etching, like that of the Bolton rocks, is prepared for future mezzo-tint, and looks harsh in its present state; but will mark all the more clearly several points of structure in question. The diamond-shaped rock, however, (M, in the reference figure,) is not so conspicuous here as it will be when the plate is finished, being relieved in light from the mass behind, as also the faint distant crests in dark from the sky.
[78] An anecdote is related, more to our present purpose, and better authenticated, inasmuch as the name of the artist to whom Turner was speaking at the time is commonly stated, though I do not give it here, not having asked his permission. The story runs that this artist (one of our leading landscape painters) was complaining to Turner that, after going to Domo d'Ossola, to find the site of a particular view which had struck him several years before, he had entirely failed in doing so; "it looked different when he went back again." "What," replied Turner, "do you not know yet, at your age, that you ought to paint your impressions?"
[79] So, in the exact length or shape of shadows in general, he will often be found quite inaccurate; because the irregularity caused in shadows by the shape of what they fall on, as well as what they fall from, renders the law of connection untraceable by the eye or the instinct. The chief visible thing about a shadow is, that it is always of some form which nobody would have thought of; and this visible principle Turner always seizes, sometimes wrongly in calculated fact, but always so rightly as to give more the look of a real shadow than any one else.