gradations with brown or gray,
like those of the photograph.

111. Now observe; the perfection of work would be tinted shadow, like
photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated darkness; and as long
as your effect depends in anywise on visible lines, your art is not
perfect, though it may be first-rate of its kind. But to get complete
results in tints merely, requires both long time and consummate skill;
and you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed over
or under them, get more expression of facts than you could reach in any
other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the Liber
Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the simplest
shorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with
the most subtle natural effects; for the firm etching gets at the
expression of complicated details, as leaves, masonry, textures of
ground, etc., while the overlaid tint enables you to express the most
tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist, or cloud.
Most of the best drawings by the old masters are executed on this
principle, the touches of the pen being useful also to give a look of
transparency to shadows, which could not otherwise be attained but by
great finish of tinting; and if you have access to any ordinarily good
public gallery, or can make friends of any printsellers who have folios
either of old drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at a loss
to find some example of this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of
photographs also are now taken from the best drawings by the old
masters, and I hope that our Mechanics' Institutes and other societies
organized with a view to public instruction, will not fail to possess
themselves of examples of these, and to make them accessible to students
of drawing in the vicinity; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show
the unison of tint with pen etching, and the "St. Catherine,"
photographed by Thurston Thompson from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre,
to show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, would be
all that is necessary, and would, I believe, be in many cases more
serviceable than a larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery
of second-rate prints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable,
because all other modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk
separately, or color separately, may be seen by the poorest student in
any cheap illustrated book, or in shop