When we examine carefully the sketch of Watchet we find that it gives us very little more than the general idea of a small fishing village, with a curved breakwater and a stretch of rocky coast running off into the distance. This general idea must have been all that the artist retained of his experiences of the place, _i.e._, he cannot possibly have retained any bare unattached visual sensations of any of the particular objects comprised in the scene. The details of the construction of the breakwater in the engraving may, for all I know (I have never visited the place), be exactly like those of the actual one which Turner saw there, but what little I know of his ordinary methods of work inclines me to doubt it. It is probably true enough to the general facts of the case, but all those little local accidents of form which the conscientious realist of to-day would linger over so lovingly are certainly ignored. No doubt when Turner was on the spot he looked at the breakwater, as at everything, with keen and vigilant eyes, and his impression of the structure would have contributed to the building up in his mind of a definite and concrete idea of the laws and customs of breakwaters in general. And when he set to work to elaborate his sketch it was doubtless this general idea which came into play, and which turned those half-dozen rudely scratched lines in the sketch into a sharply defined mental picture, as vivid to Turner’s imagination as a real scene, and infinitely more useful for his immediate purpose, for the task of selection and rejection was already done. In this way the whole subject came to life; the sketch, a fixed point in present perception, beckoning forth the stored essential riches of the artist’s mind. Those three upright lines inside the breakwater turn into [Illustration: _PLATE LV_ WATCHET, SOMERSETSHIRE PENCIL. ABOUT 1811] [Illustration: WATCHET, SOMERSETSHIRE ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “THE SOUTHERN COAST,” 1 APRIL, 1820] [Illustration: _PLATE LVI_ BOSCASTLE, CORNWALL PENCIL, ABOUT 1811] [Illustration: BOSCASTLE, CORNWALL ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “THE SOUTHERN COAST,” 10 MARCH, 1824]