§ 28. And fading of sunset, note also, on ruin. I cannot but wonder that this difference between Turner's work and previous art-conception has not been more observed. None of the great early painters draw ruins, except compulsorily. The shattered buildings introduced by them are shattered artificially, like models. There is no real sense of decay; whereas Turner only momentarily dwells on anything else than ruin. Take up the Liber Studiorum, and observe how this feeling of decay and humiliation gives solemnity to all its simplest subjects; even to his view of daily labor. I have marked its tendency in examining the design of the Mill and Lock, but observe its continuance through the book. There is no exultation in thriving city, or mart, or in happy rural toil, or harvest gathering. Only the grinding at the mill, and patient striving with hard conditions of life. Observe the two disordered and poor farm-yards, cart, and ploughshare, and harrow rotting away; note the pastoral by the brook side, with its neglected stream, and haggard trees, and bridge with the broken rail, and decrepit children--fever-struck--one sitting stupidly by the stagnant stream; the other in rags, and with an old man's hat on, and lame, leaning on a stick. Then the "Hedging and ditching," with its bleak sky and blighted trees--hacked, and bitten, and starved by the clay soil into something between trees and firewood; its meanly-faced, sickly laborers--pollard laborers, like the willow trunk they hew; and the slatternly peasant-woman, with worn cloak and battered bonnet--an English Dryad. Then the Water-mill, beyond the fallen steps overgrown with the thistle: itself a ruin, mud-built at first, now propped on both sides;--the planks torn from its cattle-shed; a feeble beam, splintered at the end, set against the dwelling-house from the ruined pier of the watercourse; the old millstone--useless for many a day--half buried in slime, at the bottom of the wall; the listless children, listless dog, and the poor gleaner bringing her single sheaf to be ground. Then the "Peat bog," with its cold, dark rain, and dangerous labor. And last and chief, the mill in the valley of the Chartreuse. Another than Turner would have painted the convent; but he had no sympathy with the hope, no mercy for the indolence of the monk. He painted the mill in the valley. Precipice overhanging it, and wildness of dark forest round; blind rage and strength of mountain torrent rolled beneath it,--calm sunset above, but fading from the glen, leaving it to its roar of passionate waters and sighing of pine-branches in the night.