Welsh tour of 1793--‘St. Anselm’s Chapel’--Turner’s topographical rivals--Midland tour of 1794--Topographical and antiquarian draughtsmanship--Its main interest is not embodied in the work--The marvellous _petit-maítre_--The ‘Cottage Interior’--Light and shade as a means of expression--The sketch-books of 1795 and their contents--‘High Force of Tees’ or ‘Fall of Melincourt’? Among the five drawings by which Turner was represented in the exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1794, one was a view of the Devil’s Bridge, Cardiganshire. This was doubtless one of the first results of the sketching tour in Wales made in 1793. We can readily believe that Turner’s imagination was powerfully impressed by the wild and gloomy scenery of the country and its romantic ruins, but his efforts to embody his impressions were not at first very successful. For the moment his powers as an architectural draughtsman were more in evidence than his powers of expressing grand and gloomy ideas. The romantic turn of his mind had to be more fully developed before it could command public support, and for the time being this phase of his art seemed swamped in the flood of topographical employment which the immediate success of his less ambitious drawings in the 1794 exhibition brought him. In a contemporary press notice, preserved among the Anderdon collection of catalogues in the Print Room of the British Museum, Turner’s drawings of ‘Christchurch Gate, Canterbury,’ and the ‘Porch of Great Malvern Abbey, Worcestershire,’ are said to be ‘amongst the best in the present exhibition. They are the productions,’ the writer continues, ‘of a very young artist, and give strong indications of first-rate ability; the character of Gothic architecture is most happily preserved, and its profusion of minute parts massed with judgment and tinctured with truth and fidelity. This young artist should beware of contemporary imitations. His present effort evinces an eye for nature, which should scorn to look to any other source.’