He has painted a noble human creature simply in clear
daylight; not in rapture, nor yet in agony. He is dressed neither in a
rainbow, nor bedraggled with blood. You are neither to be alarmed nor
entertained by anything that is likely to happen to him. You are not
to be improved by the piety of his expression, nor disgusted by its
truculence. But there is more true mastery of light and shade, if your
eye is subtle enough to see it, in the hollows and angles of the
architecture and folds of the dress, than in all the etchings of
Rembrandt put together. The unexciting color will not at first delight
you; but its charm will never fail; and from all the works of
variously strained and obtrusive power with which it is surrounded,
you will find that you never return to it but with a sense of relief
and of peace, which can only be given you by the tender skill which is
wholly without pretense, without pride, and without error.

III.

COLOR.

61. The distinctions between schools of art which I have so often
asked you to observe are, you must be aware, founded only on the
excess of certain qualities in one group of painters over another, or
the difference in their tendencies; and not in the absolute possession
by one group, and absence in the rest, of any given skill. But this
impossibility of drawing trenchant lines of parting need never
interfere with the distinctness of our conception of the opponent
principles which balance each other in great minds, or paralyze each
other in weak ones; and I cannot too often urge you to keep clearly
separate in your thoughts the school which I have called[11] "of
Crystal," because its distinctive virtue is seen unaided in the sharp
separations and prismatic harmonies of painted glass, and the other,
the "School of Clay," because its distinctive virtue is seen in the
qualities of any fine work in uncolored terra cotta, and in every
drawing which represents them.

[Footnote 11: "Lectures on Art, 1870," Sec. 185.]

62. You know I sometimes speak of these generally as the Gothic and
Greek schools, sometimes as the colorist and chiaroscurist. All these
oppositions are liable to infinite qualification and gradation, as
between species of animals; and you must not be troubled, therefore,
if sometimes momentary contradictions seem to arise in examining
special points. Nay, the modes of opposition in the greatest men are
inlaid and complex; difficult to explain, though in themselves cl