July — Sunshine of different Degrees. 2 1 9 



could not convey the sense of darkness in shadow and 

 local color, which is one of the peculiar effects of really 

 intense light. Thus Turner, working in a high key, 

 expressed the sunshine of England ; but his system, 

 good as it was for the pale northern landscape, was 

 inadequate to the expression of the southern summer, 

 with its apparently dark dull greens and grays, and 

 shadows far darker still* 



The chief misery of a long hot season — the want of 

 water — is entirely unknown in the Val Ste. Veronique, 

 where the pure little streams rush over their clean 

 granite beds with as much vivacity as if it had been 

 raining the day before. They are fed by springs in 

 the upper hills, which never fail in the hot weather, 

 and the consequence is a perennial refreshment of 

 the valleys for several miles ; but if you follow these 

 babbling rivulets farther down, you observe the gradual 

 loss of their early freshness and brightness, till finally 

 they are absorbed in the river of the plain, and in great 

 part lost by evaporation. Nothing, even in winter sce- 

 nery, is drearier than the bed of some broad southern 

 river after the torrid months have dried it. The Loire, 

 amongst French rivers, most abounds in dreary scenes 

 of this kind. For hundreds of miles you may follow 

 broad tracts of burning sand, or hot white pebbles 

 through which the stream finds its way tortuously, often 



* This seeming darkness of certain tints in intense sunshine is 

 chiefly, no' doubt, due to contrast. As a matter of fact (not of human 

 sensation), Tennyson's 'black shadows' must be lighter than a white 

 object in dull daylight. But art ought always to go by impressions and 

 sensations rather than scientific facts. 



