Note 58 — Chapter IV

I have cut out a passage in this place which insisted on the angular character of rocks,—not because it was false, but because it was incomplete, and I cannot explain it nor complete it without example. It is not the absence of curves, but the suggestion of hardness through curves, and of the under tendencies of the inward structure, which form the true characteristics of rock form; and Salvator, whom neither here nor elsewhere I have abused enough, is not wrong because he paints curved rocks, but because his curves are the curves of ribbons and not of rocks; and the difference between rock curvature and other curvature I cannot explain verbally, but I hope to do it hereafter by illustration; and, at present, let the reader study the rock-drawing of the Mont St. Gothard subject, in the Liber Studiorum, and compare it with any examples of Salvator to which he may happen to have access. All the account of rocks here given is altogether inadequate, and I only do not alter it because I first wish to give longer study to the subject.