schools, and that colouring remains yet to be established in its perfection as a science.

The historical distribution of Painting according to the schools is not perhaps exactly coincident with its true, natural, and philosophical classification, according to which there are but three principal classes or schools; viz. the gross and material, which aims at mere nature, to which belong the Dutch and Flemish schools; the sensible, which aims at refined and select nature, which accords with the Venetian school; and the intellectual, which corresponds with the Greek, Roman, and Florentine schools, and aims at the ideal in beauty, grandeur, and sublimity and it is somewhat remarkable, in a scientific view, that these schools should have retrograded.

If the excellence of the Roman and Florentine schools in the high departments of figure, composition, and expression, must be admitted, they fail, nevertheless, in the just effect of an art which addresses itself to the mind through the sight. Their works, accordingly, have often as little effect upon the eye, as the finest poetry badly set to music has upon the ear; and as this would be better without the music, so those would often be better without their colour. True, natural, and unaffected taste, which admits no unresolved discordance among its objects, will therefore prefer generally the Venetian, to the Roman and Florentine schools, because it excels in that which is the essential basis of the art and its end of pleasing, by the medium of sensible impression.

Upon the same principle, the sublimest sentiments delivered, however accurately, in language unmeasured and inharmonious, will never redeem the performance of the poet, nor raise it above more ordinary thoughts delivered in the true measure and melody of speech; for these are the first essential,-the constituent matter,-the very colour of the poet's art.

Poets are Painters;

Words are their paint by which their thoughts are shown,

And Nature is their object.

Or, as Horace thus briefly expresses it :

"Ut Pictura Poesis erit."

GRANVILLE.

So also, according to a correct analogy, colouring may be called the elo

quence of painting,-the animating principle which gives life and action to the fine thoughts of the painter.

"Among the several kinds of beauty," says Addison, "the eye takes most delight in colour. We no where meet a more glorious or pleasing show in nature, than what appears in the heavens at the rising and setting of the sun, which is wholly made up of those different stains of light, that show themselves in clouds of a different situation. For this reason we find the Poets, who are always addressing themselves to the imagination, borrowing more of their epithets from colour, than from any other topic."-If then the purpose of painting be analogous to that of poetry, how much more powerful and important must the expression of colour be to the painter than to the poet; and how absurd the affectation of the artist or critic who undervalues colouring,-the sole object of sight,-the sole matter of Painting, whose mistress is Nature, and to her only we need appeal for evidence of its powerful effects in grandeur, as well as in sublimity and beauty.

In the practice of the individual in Painting, as well as in all the revolutions of pictorial art, in ancient Greece as in modern Italy, colouring has been the last attainment of excellence in every school;* thus Zeuxis succeeded and excelled Apelles in colouring, as Titian did Raffael. There is hence just reason to hope the artists of Britain will transcend all preceding schools in the chromatic department of Painting, if even in their progress they should not surpass them in all other departments, and in every mode and application of the art, as they have already done in an original and unrivalled use of water-colours in particular, in the perfection of landscape, in the new and beautiful device of panoramic perspective, and in engraving.

Happily too, a school of colouring has arisen, that confirms this expectation, strengthened also by the suitableness of our climate to perfect vision, -by that mean degree of light which is best adapted to the distinguishing of colours, by that boundless diversity of hue in nature, relieved by those fine effects of light and shade which are denied to more vertical suns,—and by those beauties of complexion and feature in our females, by which we

* And that also of rarest occurrence, if not of greatest difficulty;-hence Du Pile justly remarks," that for near three hundred years since Painting was revived, we could hardly reckon six Painters that had been good colourists." He might have added—" among thousands who had laboured to become such."-DU PILE'S DIALOGUE, p. 28.

are perpetually surrounded;-respects in which at least our country is not unfavourable to art. In many obvious references too, this country resembles Venice of old, the greatest of whose antient glories is still her Titian, her Giorgione, and her school of colouring; and England has had her Reynolds, and Wilson, and still has living colourists, of whom we will not offend the modesty, nor distinguish invidiously. It has, however, been urged to the disparagement of the British school, that it excels in colouring; as if it were incompatible with any other excellence, or as if nature, the great prototype of art, ever dispensed with it.

This appeal from the decisions of criticism,* in behalf of colouring, is not intended to militate against the necessity the Painter is under, of studying the other branches of his art, nor to assert the redeeming power, or the exclusive excellence, of colouring.†

For 'tis the MIND that makes the body rich;

And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,

So Honour 'peareth in the meanest habit.

What! is the jay more precious than the lark

Because his feathers are more beautiful?

Or is the adder better than the eel,

Because the painted skin contents the eye?

SHAKSP., TAMING OF THE SHREW.

Colouring alone will not therefore constitute a picture; still colour is the flesh and blood of the art, and if it be wanting, the finest performances will remain lifeless skeletons, and fail to please; and as the proper end of painting is to please, and there is a higher and more effectual medium for addressing mind, the most intellectual performances of the painter, and the grandest efforts of his invention, will fall short of their true purpose, if they pass not to the mind by the medium of pleasurable effect through their appropriate sense of sight, of which colour-and colour alone— is the immediate object; and what is Painting altogether but the art of representing visible things by light, shade, and colours? Colouring is therefore the first requisite, the matter and medium of the Painter's art: it is indeed

*See Note A.

+ As music relates to sound simply, and poetry, or figurative speech, to signification; and as these when united become sound significant, so it is with colouring in respect to Figure, &c.; the first belongs principally to the harmony of Painting, the latter to its sentiment or poetry, while in the perfect picture they are united.

the first quality which engages attention and regard-the best introduction to a picture, and that which continues to give it value so long as it is regarded. In the grosser matters of taste a food or medicine may be both salutary and nutritious, but we nauseate it if it be not also palatable or welltasted: such is Painting without colouring, and so it is with all objects of sense; nor did the first and greatest critic that ever lived assign any higher end than pleasure to even Poetry itself.* It was the deficiency of colouring in the great works of the Roman and Florentine schools which occasioned Sir Joshua Reynolds, with such admirable candour, to confess a want of attraction in their works, and to declare the necessity of a forced and oftenrepeated attention, with previous cultivation and profound investigation of their other excellences, to a just relish and estimation of their greatness, which hundreds have affected to admire upon authority, without feeling or comprehending. For this deficiency in the colouring of these great masters, apologies more ingenious than just have been offered by eminent critics, to the perversion of taste and truth; while some, through false admiration or want of sense, have attributed fine colouring to these masters.

It is the consecration of great names which blinds, betrays, and ruins their followers; and it is no less true than lamentable, that the modern Italian schools have fallen a sacrifice to the greatness of their models. And so it is in all sciences when great human authorities have subverted the authority of nature the master of masters!

Nature is made better by no mean,

But Nature makes that mean. So o'er that art

Which you say adds to Nature, is an art

That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock,

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race. This is an art

Which does mend Nature-change it rather, but
The art itself is Nature.

SHAKSP., WINTER'S TALE.

With respect to those departments of Painting which have been ranked above, and represented as inconsistent with colouring, it may be questioned whether this is not to be attributed to a proneness, common enough in all cases, to consider the greatest difficulties as the highest attainments of art;

that which is most rare as of highest esteem, and to the mistaking of novelty or singularity for beauty and excellence ;-but we have to remember that that which is most beautiful, like that which is most useful, is least rare in nature; nay, it is beautiful abstractly, because it is not rare. Thus the most common form of any thing is the most general or middle form, and such the Greeks have taught us is also the most beautiful and natural. We have to consider also, that colour individually gives finish or final value to all the productions of nature, not excepting the diamond;-and that he who has attained colouring in its complex and higher relations, has rivalled Nature in her chief beauty, whatever we may determine it to be in art.

Indeed the greatest masters of design in every school have given ready testimony to the claims of colouring; and, according to Vasari, even Michael Angelo himself, the greatest of them all, conceded to Titian, on viewing his Danaë, that he wanted nothing but the correctness of the Roman school to have rendered him the greatest painter that ever lived. There never was, indeed, is not, nor ever will be, any painter who does not colour well, for any other reason than because he is not able; and he, who should teach neglect of colouring as a doctrine, will find no disciple of true feeling and ability who would follow him. No master individually, nor school collectively, can be regarded as perfect without this first and last accomplishment of the art; nor did Painting attain its immortal reputation in Greece until Zeuxis and Apelles had conjoined colouring to the climax of its excellences, nor will such high repute ever attach itself to any modern. school without it.

Every one knows the false taste and absurdity which have sprung from the admiration of difficulty and novelty, in place of the natural and expressive, in the sister art of music; and it behoves the true lovers of art to guard against similar degeneracy in Painting, that she may not sink in like manner by quitting the charms of nature for those of artifice and false refinement, nor even abstract herself in those sublimities or excellences exclusively, which the artist alone can appreciate.

Considering that the evidence of the eye is superior to that of the ear, and that the science of colours should be naturally easier than that of sounds, it is remarkable that music should have taken the advance of other sciences, and that colouring, as a science, remains yet in the rear. This precedence the former may perhaps owe to its more sensual character, as well as to its connexion with poetry :-since, however, these arts are intimately related