It therefore depends very much upon what _we_ are in search of, what conclusions we shall come to about these Italian drawings. If we are evangelists with a mission to preach the Gospel of Naturalism, we may accept them as the finest works of art Turner ever produced, in spite of the fact that he found them useless and worse than useless for his artistic purposes. From such a point of view it would be Turner’s fault if these beautiful things threw him out and led him astray; or, as Mr. Ruskin puts it, ‘the effect of Italy upon his [Turner’s] mind is very puzzling ... he seems never to have entered thoroughly into the spirit of Italy, and the materials he obtained there were afterwards but awkwardly introduced into his large compositions.’[26] But if the processes of artistic creation are worth studying, we shall go on to ask ourselves how it is that the most elaborate, painstaking and thoroughly delightful drawings Turner ever made from nature were actually the least useful to him as a maker of pictures; and how it is that exquisitely deliberate and dainty drawings like those in the Roman and Neapolitan sketch-books lead actually to the production of frigid, hybrid, pseudo-classical pictures, while hurried and scarcely intelligible scribbles like those reproduced in Plates XXVII. and XXV. had been the means of bringing into existence such noble and impressive pictures as the ‘Windmill and Lock,’ and designs like the ‘Hedging and Ditching’? The answer to these questions is not far to seek. The state of mind necessary for the production of the two kinds of drawings is essentially different, and the one, which produces the exhaustive and accurate drawing, is antagonistic to the state of mind in which a strongly imaginative work of art is conceived, while the other, which produces a less immediately satisfying record, is actually the state of mind in which a passionately felt work of art comes to birth. In the drawing which we admire so much the emotional element is in abeyance, the cognitive or sense-perceptive is predominant; in the other the emotional element is predominant. But in the first case, while the immediate result, considered simply in itself, is more delightful, there has been [Illustration: _PLATE LII_ ROME, FROM THE VATICAN PEN AND INK AND CHINESE WHITE ON GREY. 1819] [Illustration: _PLATE LIII_ TRAJAN’S COLUMN, IN THE FORUM OF TRAJAN PENCIL. 1819] no real quickening of the artist’s spirit; in the second case, while the immediate result is deplorable for us, it is eloquent and glorious for the artist himself as the first stirring of his newborn spiritual progeny.