I am tempted to linger for a moment over the placid and self-contained air of this phase of Turner’s work, because we shall so soon get into an altogether different atmosphere, and because we shall understand Turner’s after work all the better the more clearly we grasp the character of the work we are now examining. The self-contained air to which I allude is connected in my mind with the character and limitations of topographical work. Now the essential character of topographical and purely antiquarian work is that it does not aim primarily at expressing the imaginative or emotional effects of the objects it represents. It takes these imaginative or emotional interests for granted, relying indeed on them for the ultimate justification of its work; but the work, as topographical and antiquarian, aims directly only at an adequate representation of the particular scenes or buildings with which it is concerned. There is, as it were, a tacit division of labour; the artist being called upon to record accurately and vividly a certain scene or building, merely as a scene or building, while the spectator is expected to supply the requisite mental associations and emotional colouring. The artist draws a castle, we will say, as a mere object of sight, while the spectator is supposed to remember that the castle was built by such and such a king, and that certain moving events took place in it or near it. This division of labour simplifies the work of the topographical artist, reducing his business to a clear-cut affair of definite visual facts. Hence the Oriental stolidity of Turner’s topographical work, its Oriental patience, neatness, and precision. In a drawing like the ‘Lincoln Cathedral’ Turner is as wholly immersed in the succession of particular material facts as a Japanese or Chinese artist. As with the Japanese and Chinese artists the material facts are not there entirely for their own sakes; in Turner’s case they imply an antiquarian interest, as the Eastern artists’ work implies an added religious or poetical significance. But the point to which I desire to draw attention is, that this added significance is not embodied in the work itself. It is something extraneous and fortuitous, and the work itself falls apart into something dependent. It is in fact an accessory, a work of mere illustration, not an independent work of art. We shall have to return to this subject in our next chapter, when we find Turner wrenching himself free from the trammels of topography and antiquarianism to soar into the regions of [Illustration: _PLATE VII_ PONY AND WHEELBARROW PENCIL. 1794] artistic freedom. In the meantime we will turn our attention to the topographical drawings which Turner sent to the exhibition of 1796.