The third volume, being devoted to the correction of the ideas of Style and the Ideal, to Finish, and a review of the Past Landscape-Painting, recurs to Turner in its closing chapter, “On his Teachers”; the fourth was given to Mountain Beauty, following the parallel of the first, which treated of the Truth of Mountains, and bearing as its burden of moral the expression of that Ideal by Turner; and the fifth now comes to conclude the investigations on the Ideal by chapters:  first, on “Leaf Beauty,” an exceedingly interesting investigation of the development of the forms of trees and plants as concerned with the laws of beauty; second, “Cloud Beauty”; and then of the “Ideas of Relation,” in which the author comes finally to the demonstration of the right of Turner to his position amongst the thinking and poetic painters.

From the first division, “Leaf Beauty,” we must make one extract.  The author has been speaking of the, influence of the Pine on Swiss character.

“But the point which I desire the reader to note is, that the character of the scene which, if any, appears to have been impressive to the inhabitant is not that which we ourselves feel when we enter the district.  It was not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their glaciers, though these were all peculiarly their possession, that the three venerable cantons or states received their name.  They were not called the States of the Rock, nor the States of the Lake, but the States of the Forest.  And the one of the three which contains the most touching record of the spiritual power of Swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the ‘Hill of Angels,’ has for its own none but the sweet, childish name of ‘Under the Woods.’

“And, indeed, you may pass under them, if, leaving the most sacred spot in Swiss history, the Meadow of the Three Fountains, you bid the boatman row southward a little way by the Bay of Uri.  Steepest there, on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven.  Far in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral-pavement, lies the lake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable falling waters return from the hollows of the cliff like the voices of a multitude praying under their breath.  From time to time, the beat of a wave, slow lifted, where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies heavily as the last note of a requiem.  Opposite, green with steep grass and set with chalet villages, the Tron Alp rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the shadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.

“I have seen that it is possible for the stranger to pass through this great chapel, with its font of waters, and mountain pillars, and vaults of cloud, without being touched by one noble thought or stirred by any sacred passion; but for those who received from its waves the baptism of their youth, and learned beneath its rocks the fidelity of their manhood, and watched amidst its clouds the likeness of the dream of life, with the eyes of age,—­for these I will not believe that the mountain-shrine was built or the calm of its forest-shadows guarded by their God in vain.”