I look upon this as one of the noblest sea-pieces which Turner ever produced. It has not his usual fault of over-crowding or over-glitter; the objects in it are few and noble, and the space infinite. The sky is quite one of his best: not violently black, but full of gloom and power; the complicated roundings of its volumes behind the sloop's mast, and downwards to the left, have been rendered by the engraver with notable success; and the dim light entering along the horizon, full of rain, behind the ship of war, is true and grand in the highest degree. By comparing it with the extreme darkness of the skies in the Plymouth, Dover, and Ramsgate, the reader will see how much more majesty there is in moderation than in extravagance, and how much more darkness, as far as sky is concerned, there is in gray than in black. It is not that the Plymouth and Dover skies are false,--such impenetrable forms of thunder-cloud are amongst the commonest phenomena of storm; but they have more of spent flash and past shower in them than the less passionate, but more truly stormy and threatening, volumes of the sky here. The Plymouth storm will very thoroughly wet the sails, and wash the decks, of the ships at anchor, but will send nothing to the bottom. For these pale and lurid masses, there is no saying what evil they may have in their thoughts, or what they may have to answer for before night. The ship of war in the distance is one of many instances of Turner's dislike to draw _complete_ rigging; and this not only because he chose to give an idea of his ships having seen rough service, and being crippled; but also because in men-of-war he liked the mass of the hull to be increased in apparent weight and size by want of upper spars. All artists of any rank share this last feeling. Stanfield never makes a careful study of a hull without shaking some or all of its masts out of it first, if possible. See, in the Coast Scenery, Portsmouth harbor, Falmouth, Hamoaze, and Rye old harbors; and compare, among Turner's works, the near hulls in the Devonport, Saltash, and Castle Upnor, and distance of Gosport. The fact is, partly that the precision of line in the complete spars of a man-of-war is too formal to come well into pictorial arrangements, and partly that the chief glory of a ship of the line is in its aspect of being "one that hath had losses."