§ 12. Still greater confusion in aspect is induced by the apparent
change caused by perspective in the direction of the wind. If Fig. 3 be
supposed to include a quarter of the horizon, the spaces, into which its
straight lines divide it, represent squares of sky. The curved lines,
which cross these spaces from corner to corner, are precisely parallel
throughout; and, therefore, two clouds moving, one on the curved line
from _a_ to _b_, and the other on the other side, from _c_ to _d_,
would, in reality, be moving with the same wind, in parallel lines. In
Plate 66, which is a sketch of an actual sunset behind Beauvais
cathedral (the point of the roof of the apse, a little to the left of
the centre, shows it to be a summer sunset), the white cirri in the high
light are all moving eastward, away from the sun, in perfectly parallel
lines, curving a little round to the south. Underneath, are two straight
ranks of rainy cirri, crossing each other; one directed south-east; the
other, north-west. The meeting perspective of these, in extreme
distance, determines the shape of the angular light which opens above
the cathedral. Underneath all, fragments of true rain-cloud are floating
between us and the sun, governed by curves of their own. They are,
nevertheless, connected with the straight cirri, by the dark
semi-cumulus in the middle of the shade above the cathedral.
[Illustration: FIG. 83.]
§ 13. Sky perspective, however, remains perfectly simple, so long as it
can be reduced to any rectilinear arrangement; but when nearly the whole
system is curved, which nine times out of ten is the case, it becomes
embarrassing. The central figure in Plate 65 represents the simplest
possible combination of perspective of straight lines with that of
curves, a group of concentric circles of small clouds being supposed to
cast shadows from the sun near the horizon. Such shadows are often cast
in misty air; the aspect of rays about the sun being, in fact, only
caused by spaces between them. They are carried out formally and far in
the Plate, to show how curiously they may modify the arrangement of
light in a sky. The woodcut, Fig. 83, gives roughly the arrangement of
the clouds in Turner's Pools of Solomon, in which he has employed a
concentric system of circles of this kind, and thus lighted. In the
perspective figure the clouds are represented as small square masses,
for the sake of greater simplicity, and are so beaded or strung as it
were on the curves in which they move, as to keep their distances
precisely equal, and their sides parallel. This is the usual condition
of cloud: for though arranged in curved ranks, each cloud has its face
to the front, or, at all events, acts in some parallel line--generally
another curve--with those next to it: being rarely, except in the form
of fine radiating striæ, arranged on the curves as at _a_, Fig. 84; but
as at _b_, or _c_. It would make the diagram too complex if I gave one
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