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Again in 1796, the "Companion to the Exhibition," with regard to his first sea-piece contains this paradoxical sentence, attempting to express his peculiar power of giving a distinct impression of ill-defined objects, which was apparently evident even in this early work.

"Colouring natural, figures masterly, not too distinct--obscure perception of the objects distinctly seen--through the obscurity of the night--partially illumined."

"June 2, 1797. Visited the Royal Academy Exhibition. Particularly struck with a sea-view by Turner; fishing vessels coming in, with a heavy swell, in apprehension of tempest gathering in the distance, and casting, as it advances, a night of shade, while a parting glow is spread with fine effect upon the shore. The whole composition bold in design and masterly in execution. I am entirely unacquainted with the artist; but if he proceeds as he has begun, he cannot fail to become the first in his department."

Here, then, before Turner's visit to Yorkshire, we have evidence that not only was the superiority of his work apparent, but that one or two of the special qualities which were to mark it in the future were already perceived, and publicly praised.

After looking carefully at all the ascertainable facts of Turner's youth, we can only come to the conclusion that it was not the fault of nature or mankind that he grew into a solitary and disappointed man.

Secretiveness on his own part and want of trust in his fellow-creatures seem to have been bred in him, and to have resisted all the many proofs which the friends of his youth, and we may say of his life, afforded, that there were kind and unselfish persons in the world whom he could trust, and who would trust him. There is no proof that he ever had confidential relations with any human being, not even Girtin. That he should have willingly cut himself adrift from human fellowship we are loath to believe, in spite of the many facts which seem to support it. It seems more natural, and on the whole more pleasant, to believe that he met with a severe blow to his confidence; that, though naturally suspicious, the many kindnesses he received were not without a gracious effect, but that his budding trust was killed by a sudden unexpected frost. For these reasons we are inclined to believe in the story of his early love; although it, as told by Mr. Thornbury, is not without inconsistencies.

Turner is said to have plighted vows with the sister of his school friend at Margate; he left on a tour, giving her his portrait, the letters between them were intercepted, and after waiting two years she accepted another. When he reappeared she was on the eve of her marriage, and thinking her honour involved, refused to return to her old love.

Such in short is the story which we wish to believe, and as it came to Mr. Thornbury from one who heard it from relatives of the lady, to whom she told it, there is probably some truth in it. It is, however, almost impossible to believe that Turner, whose tours never extended to two years, and whose power of locomotion was extraordinary, should allow that time to elapse without going to see one whom he really loved. If he did not get any letters he would have been desperate; if he did get letters they would have shown him that she had not received his, which would have made him, if possible, more desperate still. As the name of the lady is not given, it is next to impossible to find out the truth. Our faith, however, as a balance of probability, still remains that Turner was jilted, and that the effect of it was to confirm for ever his want of confidence in his fellow-creatures.

YORKSHIRE AND THE YOUNG ACADEMICIAN.

From the facts of the foregoing chapter it may be fairly presumed that although Turner's election as Associate in 1799 followed quickly after his fine display of pictures from the northern counties in 1798, he was before this a marked man, whose superiority over all then living landscape painters was visible to critics and lovers of art, and could not have been disguised from the eyes of the artists of the Royal Academy. It did not require a genius like that of Turner to distance competitors on the Academy walls in those days. England was almost at its lowest point both in literature and art. The great men of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, Pope, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Swift, Fielding, Sterne and Richardson, had long been dead, and of the later brilliant, but small circle of artists and men of letters of which Dr. Johnson was the centre , Reynolds only was left, and he was moribund. Of other artists with any title to fame there was none left but De Loutherbourg and Morland; Hogarth had died in 1764, Wilson in 1782, Gainsborough in 1788. The new generation of men of genius were born; some were growing up, some in their cradles. A few had already shown signs. Wordsworth and Coleridge had just put forth their "Lyrical Ballads" at Bristol, Burns was famous in Scotland, Charles Lamb had written "Rosamund Gray," but Scott the "Great Unknown," was as yet "unknown" only, though five years older than Turner; Byron had not gone to Harrow, and the united ages of Keats and Shelley did not amount to ten years; the only living poets of deserved repute were Cowper and Crabbe. Della Crusca in poetry, and West in art, were the bright particular stars of this gloomy period. The landscape painters who were Academicians were such men as Sir William Beechey, Sir Francis Bourgeois, Garvey, Farington, and Paul Sandby, and among the Associates, Turner had no more important rival than Philip Reinagle. Girtin and De Loutherbourg alone of all the then exhibitors were anything like a match for him, and Girtin spoilt any chance he might otherwise have had of Academic honours by not exhibiting pictures in oil; he died in 1802, leaving Turner undisputed master of the field. It is not greatly therefore to be wondered at that Turner was elected Associate in 1799, and a full Academician in 1802. It was, however, much to the credit of the Academy that they recognized his talent so soon and welcomed him as an honour to their body, instead of keeping him out from jealous motives. Turner never forgot what he owed to the Academy, and whether it taught him nothing, as Mr. Ruskin says, or a great deal, as Mr. Hamerton thinks, does not much matter--it taught him all it knew, and gave him ungrudgingly every honour in its gift. But its claims on his gratitude did not stop here, for it was his school in more than one branch of learning; from its catalogues he derived the subjects of most of his pictures, they directed him to the poems which set flame to his imagination, and helped , with their queer spelling and grammar and truncated quotations, to form what literary style he had; but the greatest boon which the Academy afforded was the opportunity of fame, a field for that ambition which was one of the ruling powers of his nature.

But his tour in the North in 1797 was before his days of Academic rivalries and glories. He was only two-and-twenty, and seems to have been actuated by no motive but to paint as well and truly as he could the beautiful scenery through which he passed. The effect upon him of the fells and vales of Yorkshire and Cumberland seems to have been much the same as that of Scotland upon Landseer; it braced all his powers, developed manhood of art, turned him from a toilsome student into a triumphant master. Mr. Ruskin writes more eloquently than truly about this first visit. "For the first time the silence of nature around him, her freedom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. Peace at last, and freedom at last, and loveliness at last; it is here then, among the deserted vales--not among men; those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel faces--that multitudinous marred humanity--are not the only things which God has made." These are fine words, but what a picture, if true! Can this young man who has travelled through all these many counties in England and Wales, which we have already enumerated, never have known the "silence of nature," or "freedom," or "peace," or "loveliness?" Can his experience of mankind, of Dr. Monro, of Girtin, of Mr. Hardwick, of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mr. Henderson, have left upon him such an impression of the failure of God's handiwork in making men, that a mountain seems to him in comparison as a revelation of unexpected success? If Turner had been cooped in a garret of the foulest alley in London since his birth, and had only escaped now and then from the hardest drudgery to read the works of Mr. Carlyle, this picture might be near the truth, but we doubt even then if it could escape the charge of being over-coloured.

Altogether it is difficult to over-estimate the influence of this first journey to the North upon Turner's mind and art, although he had almost perfected his skill and shown unmistakable signs of genius before. But these tours had other gifts not less important, though in a different way, for his introductions to Dr. Whitaker, the local historian, to Mr. Basire, the engraver, to Mr. Fawkes of Farnley, to Lord Harewood, and to Sir John Leicester Lord de Tabley), through Mr. Lister-Parker of Browsholme Hall, his guardian, may all be said to have resulted from this tour.

Dr. Whitaker was the vicar of the parish of Whalley, and was writing a book upon it in the manner of those days, giving descriptions of the local antiquities, the churches, the ruins, the crosses, and an account of the county families, with their pedigrees and engravings of their ancestral seats. Not only each county, but almost every parish had such a historian in those days, and although the spirit of these works is archaeological rather than artistic, engaged with genealogy rather than history, and with pride of family and county rather than of the people and nation, they did a great deal of valuable work. Dr. Whitaker's work is no exception to this rule, and he was in many ways a typical writer of the kind, for he himself, though he "chose" the Church as his profession, was a man of property and county importance. Valuable as artists were in those days to the writers of these works, they were yet considered of very secondary rank. They were indeed not called "artists" but "draftsmen," and notwithstanding that Dr. Whitaker recognized Turner's genius, he did not think it necessary in this "Parish of Whalley" to mention in the preface the existence of such a person, although the names of all the gentlemen of the county who had furnished him with drawings or information are carefully acknowledged therein; but nothing will show better the relations between the two men than an extract from a letter from the reverend bookmaker to one of his county friends, Mr. Wilson, of Clitheroe, dated Feb. 8th, 1800.

"I have just had a ludicrous dispute to settle between Mr. Townley" , "myself and Turner, the draftsman. Mr. Townley it seems has found out an old and very bad painting of Gawthorpe at Mr. Shuttleworth's house in London, as it stood in the last century, with all its contemporary accompaniments of clipped yews, parterres, &c.: this he insisted would be more characteristic than Turner's own sketch, which he desired him to lay aside, and copy the other. Turner, abhorring the landscape and contemning the execution of it, refused to comply, and wrote to me very tragically on the subject. Next arrived a letter from Mr. Townley, recommending it to me to allow Turner to take his own way, but while he wrote, his mind veered about, and he concluded with desiring me to urge Turner to the performance of his requisition, as from myself. I have, however, attempted something of a compromise, which I fear will not succeed, as Turner has all the irritability of youthful genius."

The "compromise" was handing over the task of drawing from the objectionable picture to Mr. J. Basire the engraver.

We should like to see Turner's "tragical" letter, and also his rejected drawing; we should also like to have seen Dr. Whitaker's face if he had been told that not many years after a book would have been published of drawings by Turner, the draftsman, with "descriptions by the Rev. Dr. Whitaker."

Of Mr. Fawkes, of whose hall at Farnley Turner made a drawing for the "Parish of Whalley," but with whom he is said by Thornbury to have become acquainted about 1802, it may be said that he was one of Turner's longest and staunchest friends. The number of drawings which he made when visiting Mr. Fawkes between 1803 and 1820 attest the frequency of his visits and his affection for the place and its occupants, while the splendid series of drawings in England, Switzerland, Italy, and on the Rhine, and the few precious oil pictures purchased by Mr. Fawkes, show him to have been not only a true friend, but a warm and sympathizing admirer of his genius. He indeed was a friend such as few are permitted to know--one of a goodly number who in Turner's youth and manhood should have made the world to him specially pleasant and sociable, frank and healthy. If he could not or would not have it so, it was not from insensibility, for his feeling was deep and his heart was sound. "He could not make up his mind to visit Farnley after his old friend's death," and he could not speak of the shore of the Wharfe "but his voice faltered." Dayes wrote of him in 1804, "This man must be loved for his works, for his person is not striking, nor his conversation brilliant." At Farnley, as at Mr. Wells' cottage, Turner was made at home, but that he did not escape good-humoured ridicule even at Farnley is plain from a caricature by Mr. Fawkes, "which is thought by old friends to be very like. It shows us a little Jewish-nosed man in an ill-cut brown tail coat, striped waistcoat, and enormous frilled shirt, with feet and hands notably small, sketching on a small piece of paper, held down almost level with his waist." It is evident that at this time, in spite of his clear little blue eyes, and his small hands and feet, his appearance was not one likely to prepossess women, or to inspire consideration among men, and that one of the ills from which his painting room afforded a refuge may have often been a wounded vanity. There can be nothing more constantly galling to a sensitive man of genius than to feel that his appearance does not inspire the respect he feels due to him. If he has eloquence sufficient to command attention, this will not matter so much; but if he has not even that , his natural refuge is solitude, his one absorbing occupation is his art, his only worldly ambition is to show what is in him, and to compel respect to his genius through his works.

From the time that Turner became an Associate his struggles, if he can ever be said to have had any, were over, and many changes took place in his life and art. He ceased almost entirely from making topographical drawings for the engravers, limiting his efforts to a heading to the "Oxford Almanack," and a few drawings for "Britannia Depicta," "Mawman's Tour," and some other books, until the commencement of the "Southern Coast" in 1814. He had in effect emancipated himself from "hackwork," and could turn his attention to more congenial and ambitious labour. The "draftsman" had become the artist, and he showed the improvement in his position by moving from Hand Court, Maiden Lane, to 64, Harley Street.

The evidence of Turner's pictures shows little tranquillity of mind during this period, but, on the contrary, all the restlessness of unsatisfied ambition. As he had already pitted himself against, and beaten all the water-colourists, he now commenced a course of rivalry against all the oil painters past and present, who came anywhere within the reach of his art, which he endeavoured to extend far beyond landscape limits.

"The figures are made out and coloured without reference to the situation they are in; the sea is beautifully painted, and the foamy tops of the waves blown off by the wind with great observation of nature; nevertheless, the whole work looks little and defined compared with its great competitor. Turner's boat is advancing towards the spectator with all sails set, and a similarity in both pictures is that the sails are prevented from being too cutting and harsh from their melting into and being softened by other sails of a similar shape and colour. A small boat is brought in contact in Turner's, stowing away fish, which forms the principal light, if it may be so called, for there is no strong light in the picture; the lights are of a subdued grey tone even in the yeasty waves; the shape of the mass of light on the water is broad, and of a beautiful form; in Vandervelde's picture it is spotty and devoid of union with the vessel. In Turner we see an obscure outlined form in everything, for though the warm tints of the masses of clouds serve to break down and diffuse the colour of the sails, their form is disturbed by the handling of his brush. In comparing the two pictures as works of art, Vandervelde's must have the preference as far as priority of composition is concerned; but Turner has had the boldness to tell the same story, clothing it with all the grandeur and sublimity of natural representation. The light and shade is very excellent; the mass of dark sky, brought in contact with the sail of the advancing boat, is broad in the extreme."

THE LIBER STUDIORUM--HIS POETRY AND DRAGONS.

The want of a well-considered plan, and the capricious way in which they were published, contributed to the ill-success of the work; and though we are accustomed to look upon its failure as a severe judgment on the taste of the time, we are not at all sure that it would have succeeded if published in the present day, unless Mr. Ruskin had written the advertisement.

"The meaning of the entire book," according to that eloquent writer, "was symbolized in the frontispiece, which he engraved with his own hand: Tyre at Sunset, with the Rape of Europa, indicating the symbolism of the decay of Europe by that of Tyre, its beauty passing away into terror and judgment ."

Turner's advertisement thus describes the intention of the work:--

"Intended as an illustration of Landscape Composition, classed as follows: Historical, Mountainous, Pastoral, Marine, and Architectural."

We think Turner's description the more correct, and that the intention of his frontispiece was to give all the "classes" in one composition, and we are extremely doubtful whether Turner knew or cared anything about either Minos or Rhadamanthus.

We have spoken of the book as an attack on Claude, and of the "intention" of the work, but we are not sure that we are not using too definite ideas to express the variety of impulses in Turner's mind that tended to the commencement of the "Liber." We have seen that the first notion of it, and its divisions, were suggested by Mr. Wells, and the plates are nothing more nor less than a selection from his sketches and pictures, arranged under these heads. His early topographical drawings and studies in England provided him with the architectural and pastoral subjects, his studies of Claude and the Poussins and Wilson, with the elegant pastoral, Vandevelde and nature with the marine, and his one or two visits to the Continent with the mountainous. The frontispiece, the first attempt to give a coherent signification to the whole, was not published till 1812, and it was not till 1816 that the advertisement to which we have called attention appeared when, after four years' intermission, the issue of the "Liber" was recommenced; even then it is only described as "an illustration of Landscape Composition;" and it is quite probable that the desire to make money, to display his art, to rival Claude, and to educate the public, contributed to the production of the work, without any very vivid consciousness on his part as to his motives of action. It has, like all Turner's work, the characteristics of a gradual growth rather than of the carrying out of a well-defined conception.

"Craft, treachery, and fraud--Salassian force Hung on the fainting rear! then Plunder seiz'd The victor and the captive--Saguntum's spoil, Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc'd, Look'd on the sun with hope;--low, broad, and wan. While the fierce archer of the downward year Stains Italy's blanch'd barrier with storms. In vain each pass, ensanguin'd deep with dead, Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll'd. Still on Campania's fertile plains--he thought But the loud breeze sob'd, Capua's joys beware."

This is nearer to poetry than Turner ever got again. The picture is well-known, and was suggested partly by a storm observed at Farnley, partly by a picture by J. Cozens, of the same subject, from which Turner is reported to have said that he learnt more than from any other.

This is Mr. Thornbury's reading of part of the longest piece of poetry by Turner yet published, which he has printed without any care, making greater nonsense than even Turner ever wrote, which is saying a great deal. "Awakened" for instance is probably "unwakened," and "monumental stone" is probably "mental store" with another word at the commencement, the word "power" is possibly "pours," as the next line goes on, "a steady current, nor with headlong force," &c. We quite agree with Mr. W. M. Rossetti, that these extracts are not made the best of, though it is doubtful whether the result of more careful editing would be worth the trouble.

The two great dragons of Turner, that which guards the Garden of the Hesperides, and the Python, are specially interesting as the greatest efforts made by Turner's imagination in the creation of living forms, excepting, perhaps, the cloud figure of Polyphemus. They are perhaps the only monsters of the kind created by an artist's fancy, which are credible even for a moment. They will not stand analysis any more than any other painters' monsters, but you can enjoy the pictures without being disturbed by palpable impossibilities. The distance at which we see Ladon helps the illusion; with his fiery eyes and smoking jaws, his spiny back and terrible tail, no one could wish for a more probable reptile. The only objection that has been made to him is that his jaws are too thin and brittle, while Mr. Buskin is extravagant in his praise. It is wonderful to him--

Mr. Ruskin then goes on to call attention to--

"The mighty articulations of his body, rolling in great iron waves, a cataract of coiling strength and crashing armour, down amongst the mountain rents. Fancy him moving, and the roaring of the ground under his rings; the grinding down of the rocks by his toothed whorls; the skeleton glacier of him in thunderous march, and the ashes of the hills rising round him like smoke, and encompassing him like a curtain."

The description, fine as it is, seems to us to destroy all belief in Turner's dragon. The wings of a pterodactyle would never lift the body of an iguanodon, and Turner's dragon could not even walk, his comparatively puny body could never even move his miles of tail, let alone lift them. It is far better to leave him where he is; the fact that he is at the top of that rock is sufficient evidence that he got there somehow; how he got there, and how he will get down again, are questions which we had better not ask if we wish to keep our faith in him. Nor can anything be more confused than the notion of a "saurian" with "coiling strength and crashing armour," making the ground "roar under his rings." This might be well enough of a fabulous monster made of iron, but quite inappropriate when applied to a saurian, like the alligator, for instance, with its soft, slow movements, and its bony, skin-padded, noiseless armour.

The Python will stand still less an attempt to define in words what Turner has purposely left mysterious. Not even Mr. Ruskin, we fancy, would dare to pull him out straight from amongst his rocks and trees, and put his griffin's head and talons on to that marvellous body, half worm, half caterpillar. But he is grand, and believable as he is. More simple than either of the other monsters is the single wave of Jason's dragon in his den. This is a mere magnified coil of a simple snake; but its size, its glitter, its incompleteness, the terrible energy of it, its peculiar serpentine wiriness, that elasticity combined with stiffness which is so horrible to see and to feel, make it more awful even than the Python.

We do not believe in Turner's power to evolve even as imperfect a saurian as his Ladon out of his imagination, however "healthy;" and have no doubt that he had seen the fossil remains of an ichthyosaurus. We have the testimony of Mrs. Wheeler that he was much interested in geology, and think it more than probable that the thinness of the monster's jaws and, we may add, the emptiness of his eye socket are due to his drawing them from a fossil, which his knowledge was not great enough to pad with flesh.

HARLEY STREET, DEVONSHIRE, HAMMERSMITH, AND TWICKENHAM.

During the first ten years of this period we have very little intelligence respecting Turner's life. He moved from Hand Court, Maiden Lane, to 64, Harley Street, in 1799 or 1800, and it is not improbable that he bought the house, as No. 64 and the house next to it in Harley Street, and the house in Queen Anne Street, all belonged to him at the time of his death. There was communication between the three houses at the back, although the corner house fronting both streets did not belong to him. In 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804, his address in the Royal Academy Catalogue is 75, Norton Street, Portland Road; but in 1804 it is again 64, Harley Street. In 1808 it is 64, Harley Street, and West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith; and this double address is given till 1811, when it is West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, only. In and after 1812 it is always Queen Anne Street West, with the addition, from 1814 to 1826, of his house at Twickenham, called Solus Lodge in 1814, and Sandycombe Lodge from 1815 to 1826. It is remarkable that in the Catalogue of the British Institution for 1814 his address is given as Harley Street, Cavendish Square, showing that he had not then given up his house in this street, and this is good evidence that it belonged to him.

There is no doubt that he habitually lived with a mistress. Hannah Danby, who entered his service, a girl of sixteen, in the year 1801, and was his housekeeper in Queen Anne Street at his death, is generally considered to have been one; and Sophia Caroline Booth, with whom he spent his last years in an obscure lodging in Chelsea, another. There are many who have lived more immoral lives, and have done more harm to others by their immorality; but he chose a kind of illegal connection which was particularly destructive to himself. He made his home the scene of his irregularities, and, by entering into ultimate relations with uneducated women, cut himself off from healthy social influences which would have given daily employment to his naturally warm heart, and prevented him from growing into a selfish, solitary man. Not to be able to enjoy habitually the society of pure educated women, not to be able to welcome your friend to your hearth, could not have been good for a man's character, or his art, or his intellect.

His uninterrupted privacy possibly enabled him to produce more, and to develop his genius farther in one direction; but we could have well spared many of his pictures for a few works graced with a wider culture and a healthier sentiment. He could paint, and paint, perhaps, better for his isolation--

"The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the Poet's dream."

But it would have been better for him, and, we think, for his art also, if he could have said:--

"Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind! Such happiness, wherever it be known, Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind."

"He was aware that he could not hope to gain credit in the world out of his profession. I believe that his own ordinary person was, in his clear-mindedness, somewhat considered in estimating his career in life. He was once at a party where there were several beautiful women. One of them struck him much with her charms and captivating appearance; and he said to a friend, in a moment of unguarded admiration, 'If she would marry me, I would give her a hundred thousand.'"

This, and the increasing absorption in his art of all of himself that could be so absorbed; his desire to economize both his time and his money; his innate hatred of interference with his liberty; his aversion from undertaking any obligation, the consequences of which he could not calculate--all tended to keep him from matrimony, and to make him content with the most unromantic amours.

That he in 1811 or thereabouts could be hospitable and a good companion away from home, is shown by Mr. Redding in his pleasant volume, from which we have just quoted. He met Turner on what appears to have been his first visit to the county to which his family belonged--Devonshire. He met him first, Mr. Redding thinks, at the house of Mr. Collier , an eminent merchant of Plymouth, and accompanied him on many excursions. On one of these Turner actually gave a picnic "in excellent taste" at a seat on the summit of the hill, overlooking the Sound and Cawsand Bay.

"Cold meats, shell fish, and good wines were provided on that delightful and unrivalled spot. Our host was agreeable, but terse, blunt, and almost epigrammatic at times. Never given to waste his words, nor remarkably choice in their arrangement, they were always in their right place, and admirably effective."

This last sentence sounds somewhat paradoxical, but for that reason is probably all the more accurately descriptive of Turner's art in words. Further on, when defending the great painter, we get a portrait of him as a "plain figure" with "somewhat bandy legs," and "dingy complexion." On another excursion, Redding spent a night at a small country inn with Turner, about three miles from Tavistock, as the artist had a great desire to see the country round at sunrise. The rest of the party, Mr. Collier and two friends, who had spent the day with them on the shores of the Tamar with a scanty supply of provisions, preferred to pass the night at Tavistock.

"Turner was content with bread and cheese and beer, tolerably good, for dinner and supper in one. I contrived to feast somewhat less simply on bacon and eggs, through an afterthought inspiration. In the little sanded room we conversed by the light of an attenuated candle, and some aid from the moon, until nearly midnight, when Turner laid his head upon the table, and was soon sound asleep. I placed two or three chairs in a line, and followed his example at full recumbency. In this way three or four hours' rest were obtained, and we were both fresh enough to go out, as soon as the sun was up, to explore the scenery in the neighbourhood, and get a humble breakfast, before our friends rejoined us from Tavistock. It was in that early morning Turner made a sketch of the picture to which I have alluded, and which he invited me to his gallery to see."

Another of these excursions was to Burr or Borough Island, in Bigbury Bay, "To eat hot lobsters fresh from the sea."

"The morning was squally, and the sea rolled boisterously into the Sound. As we ran out, the sea continued to rise, and off Stake's point became stormy. Our Dutch boat rode bravely over the furrows, which in that low part of the Channel roll grandly in unbroken ridges from the Atlantic."

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