A curious instance of Turner’s habit of using his notes rather as hints to his imagination than as providing ready-made material waiting for immediate incorporation, is afforded by the sketches of some figures made while he was standing on the Calton Hill. On the back of one of the pages on which our view of Edinburgh is drawn, there is a rough sketch of the brow of the hill with groups of figures on it. Among these figures are three girls attending to the drying of the clothes they have washed. One of these is standing shaking out a cloth in the wind. But though Turner has introduced this incident into the foreground of his picture, the figure there is not a repetition of the graceful figure in the sketch. In the picture the action has been changed, and the figure presented in a different point of view. It is designed altogether afresh. In the same way none of the other figures is repeated in the finished drawing. The figures in the drawing are indeed the same sort of people as in the sketch, but each is designed specially for its place, and with reference to the movement of the whole picture. All this is eminently characteristic of the cast of Turner’s mind, which seems to store scenes and incidents in complete independence of their momentary and particular appearance; he is thus able to set these invisible essences in motion before his mind’s eye, and to wait till they arrange themselves to his complete satisfaction, and he has then no difficulty in clothing them with the attributes of time and space.