an array of fishing boats, the sea ripples into the harbour and creeps up the shore, the village straightens itself out and grows into a collection of habitable houses, with gardens and parting walls, the women come out of the houses to spread their washing on the grass to dry, others gossip in the roadway, the men have a little business loading or unloading one of the boats, or else see to the nets, or stroll idly along the jetty, and a couple set off on important business along the road that leads over the hill and far away. The whole process, of course, is absurdly easy and familiar. Even the least imaginative of us is capable of some kind of success in this line of imaginative interpretation. The only point of difference between the least of us and the greatest in this kind of exercise is in the quality of the subjective filling-out with which we clothe our meagre data, in the wealth of experience stored and refined by thought, its coherence, and above all, its clear-cut precision and definition. The power to force all the floating imagery thus called up to what I think Blake called ‘the seeing point’--to make the mental imagery as clear-cut and vivid as an actual object of sight, and then to use it as the material for the construction of a picture, these are exceptional capacities; but we can hardly doubt that the psychological processes which connect sketch and imaginative amplification, even in the mind of the most gifted artist, are the same as those which connect sign and interpretation in the minds of all normally constituted individuals. To an artist trained in modern methods of literal transcription, it is curious to notice the liberties Turner allows himself to take with his own sketch. In it the main shapes of the mass of rock in the middle distance are pretty clearly marked, but instead of carefully retaining these and amplifying them, his busy mind sets to work and builds the whole structure up afresh. In the end it comes out very different from the sketch, but it is so well and truly put together, it is so thoroughly steeped in the profound knowledge garnered in years of the sharpest observation and study, that we accept it more gladly than an unintelligent transcript of any particular rock formation. Nay more, even if we had forced Turner himself to stay there on the spot, and elaborate his representation with the scene in front of his eyes, there would have been no gain to the drawing, for the result could not possibly have been more thoroughly penetrated with the laws of human thought and observation.