Take one of Turner's sketches in his Liber Studiorum, a book which, for truth and power, and the very highest imaginative vis, must be compared, not with any other book of prints, but with such word-pictures as you find in Dante, in Cowper, in Wordsworth, or in Milton. It is a dark foreground filled with gloom, savage and wild in its structure; a few grim heavy trees deepen the gloom: in the centre, and going out into the illimitable sky, is a brief, irregular bit of the purest radiance, luminous, but far off. There is a strange meaning about the place; it is "not uninformed with phantasy, and looks that threaten the profane." You look more keenly into it. In the centre of the foreground sits a woman, her face hidden, her whole form settled down as by some deep sorrow; she holds up, but with her face averted, a flaming torch; behind, and around her, lie stretched out seven bodies as of men, half-naked, and dimly indicating far-gone decay; at their feet are what seem like crowns. There is a lion seen with extended tail slinking off, and a bittern has just sprung up in the corner from a reedy pool. The waning moon is lying as if fainting in the grey heavens. The harvest sheaves stand near at hand, against the sky. The picture deepens in its gloom. The torch gives more of its fitful light as you steadily gaze. What is all this? These are two sons and five grandsons of Saul, who "fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the beginning of barley harvest." And she who sits there solitary is "Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, who took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night." For five months did this desolate mother watch by the bodies of her sons! She is at her ceaseless work, morn, noon, and night incessantly. How your heart now fills, as well as your eyes! How you realize the idea! What a sacred significance it gives to the place, and receives from it! What thoughts it awakens! Saul and his miserable story, David and his lamentation, the mountains of Gil-boa, the streets of Askelon. The king of beasts slinking off once more, hungry, angry, and afraid—finding her still there. The barley sheaves, indicating by a touch of wonderful genius, that it is nearer the beginning than the end of her time, so that we project our sympathy forward upon the future months. No one but a great artist would have thought of this. And that unfailing, forlorn woman, what love! That only love which He whose name and nature it has honoured by admitting to be nearest, though at an infinite distance from His own. "Can a woman forget?—Yea, she may forget." Here we have a scene in itself impressive, and truthfully rendered, enriched, and sanctified by a subject of the highest dignity, and deepest tenderness, and in perfect harmony with it.

Many may say we bring out much that is not in it. This maybe partly true, and is rather to that extent an enhancement of its worth. But the real truth is, that there is all this in it, if it be but sought for and received in simplicity and reverence. The materials for imagination are there; let the spectator apprehend them in the like spirit, and he will feel all, and more than we have described. Let a man try to bring anything out of some of the many landscapes we see in our Exhibitions, and he may be strong and willing, but it will prove too hard for him; it is true here as everywhere else—ex nihilo nihil Jit—ex parvo, parvum—ex falso, falsum—ex magno, magnum—ex Deo, Optimo, Maximo, maximum, optimum, divinum.