ng palette, they generate an unhappy brood of
misformed tones, which never can agree upon the canvas; while the
pigments, impure at best, become doubly so by amalgamation, the
ramifications of contrast which such differences superinduce are sure to
prove sometimes repulsive.

Contrast is nature's charm, the bubbling source that she exhausts for
her prettiest harmonies and varieties.

But earthen pitchers are easily broken at the brink, and if the
slippery streams thence flowing are not judiciously checked, they merge
into a harsh flood that sweeps away all grace, like the magic fountain
in the German myth, whose fairy tricklings, uncovered for a single
night, burst into a curbless flood, that drowned the sleeping landscape
ere the dawn. The small reactions of contrast in infinitesimal tints,
are perhaps neglected or unforeseen, but their influence is fearfully
apparent in the end.

The simplicity of beauty is very limited, and he who dabbles in infinite
decompositions of color will be certain to encounter turbid and
unnatural tones, whose ultimate result will be an inharmonious and
disunited whole.

It is true that in the landscape, and cloudscape, and waterscape, there
are wonderful extremes of chromatic gradation, for it is the hand and
mind of nature that adorns herself; she can see unerringly, and lay on
divinely, the remotest intricacies of shade, and her colors are pure
light, swimming in ether.

But these media do not come bottled up in tin tubes, and to this gift a
mortal hand ought not to presume. It might as well aspire to draw
infinitely as to tint infinitesimally; for before it can find use for
all the colors in nature, it ought to have all nature upon the canvas.
But finally, we hold that reproductive art is as much part and parcel of
human nature as the appreciative, or sensation of beauty; and that any
one can learn to copy and color a landscape or design, as well as to
perform upon a musical instrument. Let genius still wield the creative
wand, but in the wide domain of art, over his grotto alone be it
written, _Procul o procul este profani_.

ONE OF THE MILLION.

Shoemaker Scheffer opened his shop within sight of the college
buildings, and expected to live by trade. He was young and skilful,
obliging, and prompt, and acquired, ere long, a substantial reputation.
Prosperity did not mislead him; he applied his income to the furtherance
of his business, abhorred debt, squandered nothing, w