y act effectually by
having somewhere formed and regular masses, and not wholly by
skirmishers; so a picture may be various in its tendencies, but must be
somewhere united and coherent in its masses. Good composers are always
associating their colors in great groups; binding their forms together
by encompassing lines, and securing, by various dexterities of
expedient, what they themselves call "breadth:" that is to say, a large
gathering of each kind of thing into one place; light being gathered to
light, darkness to darkness, and color to color. If, however, this be
done by introducing false lights or false colors, it is absurd and
monstrous; the skill of a painter consists in obtaining breadth by
rational arrangement of his objects, not by forced or wanton treatment
of them. It is an easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another
all black or brown; but not an easy matter to assemble all the
circumstances which will naturally produce white in one place, and brown
in another. Generally speaking, however, breadth will result in
sufficient degree from fidelity of study: Nature is always broad; and if
you paint her colors in true relations, you will paint them in majestic
masses. If you find your work look broken and scattered, it is, in all
probability, not only ill composed, but untrue.

233. The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scattering of
light and color, has a certain contrasting charm, and is occasionally
introduced with exquisite effect by good composers.[70] Still it is
never the mere scattering, but the order discernible through this
scattering, which is the real source of pleasure; not the mere
multitude, but the constellation of multitude. The broken lights in the
work of a good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not
unshepherded, speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a bad
painter fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving
it to be wished they were also of dissolution.

9. THE LAW OF HARMONY.

234. This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of composition
as of truth, but it must guide composition, and is properly, therefore,
to be stated in this place.

Good drawing is, as we have seen, an _abstract_ of natural facts; you
cannot represent all that you would, but must continually be falling
short, whether you will or no, of the force, or quantity, of Nature.
Now, suppose that your means and time do not admit of your giving the
de