The drawings in the _England and Wales_ series produced in this way, in which a definite particular experience of the artist is enshrined as it were in a wealth of appropriate and beautifully arranged shapes and colours, are among the best of the series. But the pressure of professional engagements did not always permit the artist to wait for this kind of inspiration. On such occasions he appears to have fallen back on the material stored in his early sketch-books, and his rhetorical mastery of the elements of design was taxed to the uttermost to provide it with suitable clothing and ornament. An excellent example of this kind of work is provided by the drawing of Stamford, published in 1830. This was founded on one of the sketches made during Turner’s first tour in the North of England, in 1797. This sketch (Plate LXVIII.) is no doubt a fairly accurate record of the place, its humdrum streets and houses, with its three triumphant bursts of idealism in the shape of its three unimaginative church towers. In taking up this sketch thirty years after it was made, Turner seems to have asked himself, ‘What am I to do to make this dull affair into something universally interesting?’ that is to say, into something interesting and even amusing to those who care nothing for Stamford merely for its own sake. Of course the first thing for him to do was obviously to seize upon the three towers and make the most of them, setting them up against a gorgeous sky filled with rain and thunder and the darting rays of the thwarted sun, which, however, must so far triumph in its contest as to flood the towers with its light and transfigure them with its splendour. The street below remains dull and untractable, but yet something may be made of it. We can gain one point by insisting on the smallness and homeliness of the houses, intensifying their [Illustration: _PLATE LXVIII_ STAMFORD, LINCOLNSHIRE PENCIL. 1797] [Illustration: _PLATE LXIX_ STAMFORD, LINCOLNSHIRE ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “PICTURESQUE VIEWS IN ENGLAND AND WALES,” 1830] [Illustration: _PLATE LXX_ TYNEMOUTH PRIORY PENCIL, WITH PART IN WATER COLOUR. 1797.] [Illustration: TYNEMOUTH, NORTHUMBERLAND ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “PICTURESQUE VIEWS IN ENGLAND AND WALES,” 1831]