the most common and general optical laws which are to be taken
into consideration in the painting of water. Yet, in the application of
them, as tests of good or bad water painting, we must be cautious in the
extreme. An artist may know all these laws, and comply with them, and
yet paint water execrably; and he may be ignorant of every one of them,
and, in their turn, and in certain places, violate every one of them,
and yet paint water gloriously. Thousands of exquisite effects take
place in nature, utterly inexplicable, and which can be believed only
while they are seen; the combinations and applications of the above laws
are so varied and complicated that no knowledge or labor could, if
applied analytically, keep pace with them. Constant and eager
watchfulness, and portfolios filled with actual statements of
water-effect, drawn on the spot and on the instant, are worth more to
the painter than the most extended optical knowledge; without these all
his knowledge will end in a pedantic falsehood. With these it does not
matter how gross or how daring here and there may be his violations of
this or that law; his very transgressions will be admirable.

It may be said, that this is a dangerous principle to advance in these
days of idleness. I cannot help it; it is true, and must be affirmed.
Of all contemptible criticism, the most to be contemned is that which
punishes great works of art when they fight without armor, and refuses
to feel or acknowledge the great spiritual refracted sun of their truth,
because it has risen at a false angle, and burst upon them before its
appointed time. And yet, on the other hand, let it be observed that it
is not feeling, nor fancy, nor imagination, so called, that I have put
before science, but watchfulness, experience, affection and trust in
nature; and farther let it be observed, that there is a difference
between the license taken by one man and another, which makes one
license admirable, and the other punishable; and that this difference is
of a kind sufficiently discernible by every earnest person, though it is
not so explicable as that we can beforehand say where and when, or even
to whom, the license is to be forgiven. In the Paradise of Tintoret, in
the Academy of Venice, the Angel is seen in the distance driving Adam
and Eve out of the garden. Not, for Tintoret, the leading to the gate
with consolation or counsel; his strange ardor of conception is seen
here as everywhere. Full sp