much employment. He has a dark ground
behind him, which Veronese has painted first, and then when it was dry,
or nearly so, struck the locks of the dog's white hair over it with some
half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, right at once, and forever. Had
one line or hair of them gone wrong, it would have been wrong forever;
no retouching could have mended it. The poor copyists daub in first some
background, and then some dog's hair; then retouch the background, then
the hair; work for hours at it, expecting it always to come right
to-morrow--"when it is finished." They _may_ work for centuries at it,
and they will never do it. If they can do it with Veronese's allowance
of work, half a dozen sweeps of the hand over the dark background, well;
if not, they may ask the dog himself whether it will ever come right,
and get true answer from him--on Launce's conditions: "If he say 'ay,'
it will; if he say 'no,' it will; if he shake his tail and say nothing,
it will."

168. (3.) Whenever you lay on a mass of color, be sure that however
large it may be, or however small, it shall be gradated. No color exists
in Nature under ordinary circumstances without gradation. If you do not
see this, it is the fault of your inexperience: you will see it in due
time, if you practice enough. But in general you may see it at once. In
the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy gray _must_ be gradated by the
roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded side; similarly the
shaded side is gradated by reflected light. Accordingly, whether by
adding water, or white paint, or by unequal force of touch (this you
will do at pleasure, according to the texture you wish to produce), you
must, in every tint you lay on, make it a little paler at one part than
another, and get an even gradation between the two depths. This is very
like laying down a formal law or recipe for you; but you will find it is
merely the assertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed physically
impossible to meet with an ungradated piece of color, but it is so
supremely improbable, that you had better get into the habit of asking
yourself invariably, when you are going to copy a tint--not "Is that
gradated?" but "Which way is that gradated?" and at least in ninety-nine
out of a hundred instances, you will be able to answer decisively after
a careful glance, though the gradation may have been so subtle that you
did not see it at first. And it does not matter how small the touch of
colo