I know no painter who has so well succeeded in putting a wet sky into his pictures as Turner; and in this I judge him by the literal _chiaroscuro_ of engraving. In proof of it, I take down from my shelf his "Rivers of France": a book over which I have spent a great many pleasant hours, and idle ones too,--if it be idle to travel leagues at the turning of a page, and to see hill-sides spotty with vineyards, and great bridges wallowing through the Loire, and to watch the fishermen of Honfleur putting to sea. There are skies, as I said, in some of these pictures which make a man instinctively think of his umbrella, or of his distance from home: no actual rain-drift stretching from them, but such unmistakable promise of a rainy afternoon, in their little parallel wisps of dark-bottomed clouds, as would make a provident farmer order every scythe out of the field. In the "Chair of Gargantua," on which my eye falls, as I turn over the pages, an actual thunder-storm is breaking. The scene is somewhere upon the Lower Seine. From the middle of the left of the picture the lofty river-bank stretches far across, forming all the background;--its extreme distance hidden by a bold thrust of the right bank, which juts into the picture just far enough to shelter a white village, which lies gleaming upon the edge of the water. On all the foreground lies the river, broad as a bay. The storm is coming down the stream. Over the left spur of the bank, and over the meeting of the banks, it broods black as night. Through a little rift there is a glimpse of serene sky, from which a mellow light streams down upon the edges and angles of a few cliffs upon the farther shore. All the rest is heavily shadowed. The edges of the coming tempest are tortuous and convulsed, and you know that a fierce wind is driving the black billows on; yet all the water under the lee of the shores is as tranquil as a dream; a white sail, near to the white village, hangs slouchingly to the mast: but in the foreground the tempest has already caught the water; a tall lugger is scudding and careening under it as if mad; the crews of three fishermen's boats, that toss on the vexed water, are making a confused rush to shorten sail, and you may almost fancy that you hear their outcries sweeping down the wind. In the middle scene, a little steamer is floating tranquilly on water which is yet calm; and a column of smoke piling up from its tall chimney rises for a space placidly enough, until the wind catches and whisks it before the storm. I would wager ten to one, upon the mere proof in the picture, that the fishermen and the washerwomen in the foreground will be drenched within an hour.