the walls of our Academy are half covered,
disgracing, in weak hands, or in more powerful, degrading and corrupting
our whole school of art, is based on a system of color beside which
Turner's is as Vesta to Cotytto--the chastity of fire to the foulness of
earth. Every picture of this great colorist has, in one or two parts of
it, (key-notes of the whole,) points where the system of each individual
color is concentrated by a single stroke, as pure as it can come from
the pallet; but throughout the great space and extent of even the most
brilliant of his works, there will not be found a raw color; that is to
say, there is no warmth which has not gray in it, and no blue which has
not warmth in it; and the tints in which he most excels and distances
all other men, the most cherished and inimitable portions of his color,
are, as with all perfect colorists they must be, his grays.

It is instructive in this respect, to compare the sky of the Mercury
and Argus with the various illustrations of the serenity, space, and
sublimity naturally inherent in blue and pink, of which every year's
exhibition brings forward enough and to spare. In the Mercury and Argus,
the pale and vaporous blue of the heated sky is broken with gray and
pearly white, the gold color of the light warming it more or less as it
approaches or retires from the sun; but throughout, there is not a grain
of pure blue; all is subdued and warmed at the same time by the mingling
gray and gold, up to the very zenith, where, breaking through the flaky
mist, the transparent and deep azure of the sky is expressed with a
single crumbling touch; the key-note of the whole is given, and every
part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space. The reader
can scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works in contradistinction
to this, with great names attached to them, in which the sky is a sheer
piece of plumber's and glazier's work, and should be valued per yard,
with heavy extra charge for ultramarine.

Sec. 14. The basis of gray, under all his vivid hues.

Throughout the works of Turner, the same truthful principle of delicate
and subdued color is carried out with a care and labor of which it is
difficult to form a conception. He gives a dash of pure white for his
highest light; but all the other whites of his picture are pearled down
with gray or gold. He gives a fold of pure crimson to the drapery of his
nearest figure; but all his other crimsons will be d