red with light and shade. That inferiority is maintained and
asserted by all really great works of color; but most by Turner's as
their color is most intense. Whatever brilliancy he may choose to
assume, is subjected to an inviolable law of chiaroscuro, from which
there is no appeal. No richness nor depth of tint is considered of value
enough to atone for the loss of one particle of arranged light. No
brilliancy of hue is permitted to interfere with the depth of a
determined shadow. And hence it is, that while engravings from works far
less splendid in color are often vapid and cold, because the little
color employed has not been rightly based on light and shade, an
engraving from Turner is always beautiful and forcible in proportion as
the color of the original has been intense, and never in a single
instance has failed to express the picture as a perfect
composition.[21] Powerful and captivating and faithful as his color is,
it is the least important of all his excellences, because it is the
least important feature of nature. He paints in color, but he thinks in
light and shade; and were it necessary, rather than lose one line of his
forms, or one ray of his sunshine, would, I apprehend, be content to
paint in black and white to the end of his life. It is by mistaking the
shadow for the substance, and aiming at the brilliancy and the fire,
without perceiving of what deep-studied shade and inimitable form
it is at once the result and the illustration, that the host of his
imitators sink into deserved disgrace. With him, as with all the
greatest painters, and in Turner's more than all, the hue is a beautiful
auxiliary in working out the great impression to be conveyed, but is not
the source nor the essence of that impression; it is little more than a
visible melody, given to raise and assist the mind in the reception of
nobler ideas--as sacred passages of sweet sound, to prepare the feelings
for the reading of the mysteries of God.

FOOTNOTES

[19] "Caecus adulator--
Dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes,
Blandaque devexae iactaret basia rhedae."

[20] There is perhaps nothing more characteristic of a great
colorist than his power of using greens in strange places without
their being felt as such, or at least than a constant preference of
green gray to purple gray. And this hue of Poussin's clouds would
have been perfectly agreeable and allowa