. . . Here I am at Exeter: a place I never was in before. It is a fine
country round about; and last evening I saw landscape that would have
made Churchyard crazy. The Cathedral is not worth seeing to an ordinary
observer, though I dare say Archaeologists find it has its own private
merits. . . .
Tell Churchyard we were wrong about Poussin's Orion. I found this out on
my second visit to it. What disappointed me, and perhaps him, at first
sight, was a certain stiffness in Orion's own figure; I expected to see
him stalk through the landscape forcibly, as a giant usually does; but I
forgot at the moment that Orion was _blind_, and must walk as a blind
man. Therefore this stiffness in his figure was just the right thing. I
think however the picture is faulty in one respect, that the atmosphere
of the landscape is not that of _dawn_; which it should be most visibly,
since Morning is so principal an actor in the drama. All this seems to
be more addressed to Churchyard, who has seen the picture, than to you
who have not.
I saw also in London panoramas of Athens and the Himalaya mountains. In
the latter, you see the Ganges glittering a hundred and fifty miles off;
and far away the snowy peak of the mountain it rises from; that mountain
25,000 feet high. What's the use of coming to Exeter, when you can see
all this for a shilling in London? . . . And now I am going to the
Cathedral, where the Bishop has a cover to his seat sixty feet high. So
now goodbye for the present.
GLOUCESTER, _Augst_. 29/47.