As, however, is the case with almost all inevitable evil

§ 7. As, however, is the case with almost all inevitable evil, in its effect on great minds, a certain good rose even out of this warped education; namely, his power of more completely expressing all the tendencies of his epoch, and sympathizing with many feelings and many scenes which must otherwise have been entirely profitless to him. Scott's mind was just as large and full of sympathy as Turner's; but having been permitted always to take his own choice among sources of enjoyment,original oil paintings, Scott was entirely incapable of entering into the spirit of any classical scene. He was strictly a Goth and a Scot, and his sphere of sensation may be almost exactly limited by the growth of heather. But Turner had been forced to pay early attention to whatever of good and right there was even in things naturally distasteful to him. The charm of early association had been cast around much that to other men would have been tame: while making drawings of flower-gardens and Palladian mansions, he had been taught sympathy with whatever grace or refinement the garden or mansion could display, and to the close of life could enjoy the delicacy of trellis and parterre, as well as the wildness of the wood and the moorland; and watch the staying of the silver fountain at its appointed height in the sky, with an interest as earnest, if not as intense, as that with which he followed the crash of the Alpine cataract into its clouds of wayward rage. oil painting reproductions
§ 8. The distinct losses to be weighed against this gain are,first, the waste of time during youth in painting subjects of no interest whatsoever,—parks, villas, and ugly architecture in general: secondly, the devotion of its utmost strength in later years to meaningless classical compositions, such as the Fall and Rise of Carthage, Bay of Baiæ, Daphne and Leucippus, and such others, which, with infinite accumulation of material, are yet utterly heartless and emotionless, dead to the very root of thought, and incapable of producing wholesome or useful effect on any human mind, except only as exhibitions of technical skill and graceful arrangement: and, lastly, his incapacity, to the close of life, of entering heartily into the spirit of any elevated architecture; for those Palladian and classical buildings which he had been taught that it was right to admire, being wholly devoid of interest,buy oil paintings online, and in their own formality and barrenness quite unmanageable, he was obliged to make them manageable in his pictures by disguising them, and to use all kinds of playing shadows and glittering lights to obscure their ugly details; and as in their best state such buildings are white and colorless, he associated the idea of whiteness with perfect architecture generally, and was confused and puzzled when he found it grey. Hence he never got thoroughly into the feeling of Gothic; its darkness and complexity embarrassed him; he was very apt to whiten by way of idealizing it, and to cast aside its details in order to get breadth of delicate light. In Venice, and the towns of Italy generally, he fastened on the wrong buildings, and used those which he chose merely as kind of white clouds, to set off his brilliant groups of boats, or burning spaces of lagoon. In various other minor ways, which we shall trace in their proper place, his classical education hindered or hurt him; but I feel it very difficult to say how far the loss was balanced by the general grasp it gave his mind; nor am I able to conceive what would have been the result, if his aims had been made at once narrower and more natural, and he had been led in his youth to delight in Gothic legends instead of classical mythology; and, instead of the porticos of the Parthenon, had studied in the aisles of Notre Dame. oil paintings for sale cheap