These are only a few of the more obvious points of difference, but if the comparison were pursued further, we should find that every sweep of line and silhouette of the original material has been reconsidered and recast before it was allowed to form part of the new construction. I will not pretend that I regard the result obtained in this case as one of the great achievements of the series, but our observations are useful, I think, as showing the habitual thoroughness and earnestness which Turner brought to all his work. His attitude towards the matter in hand is always active and creative. His alterations are not always for the better--indeed, it is open to argument whether some of the changes made in this Basle subject were quite advantageous, but the fact remains that whatever he took up he threw himself heart and soul into, that he felt bound to recreate it from within, and that a mere cold and passive reproduction of the given would have seemed to him a cowardly shrinking from his artistic mission. He feels that he is responsible for the effect the shapes and arrangement of his subject make upon the spectator’s imagination, and that to attempt to apologise for a tame and uninteresting subject by saying, ‘It was so,’--‘It is quite true,’--would have seemed to him an unworthy evasion of his work. How incapable Turner was of copying even one of his own drawings accurately is clearly shown by the etching of the ‘Little Devil’s Bridge’ (R. 19). When we compare this with the original drawing (No. 476, N. G.) we find that almost every form in the design has been recast, not always to its individual advantage from the point of view of realisation, but with an invariable gain in the direction of greater general cohesion. Note, for example, how the straight tree trunk nearest the bridge in the drawing gets bent slightly to the left, just to make you feel the toughness and obstinacy of the tree itself. The fir-trees on the left, too, are more realistic in the drawing, but they are more forcible and dramatic in the engraving.