ich, in fact, is scarcely ever seen in nature merely in
what is quite white; we mean brilliancy--that glaze, as it were,
between the object and the eye which makes it not so much light as
bright. Now this quality of light was thought by the old masters to be
the most important one of light, extending to the half tones and even
in the shadows, where there is still light; and this by art and
lowering the tone they were able to give, so that we see not the value
of the praise when he says--

"Turner starts from the beginning with a totally different principle.
He boldly takes pure white--and justly, for it is the sign of the most
intense sunbeams--for his highest light, and lamp-black for his
deepest shade," &c. Now, if white be the sign of the most intense
sunbeams, it is as we never wish to see them; what under a tropical
sun may be white is not quite white with us; and we always find it
disagreeable in proportion as it approaches to pure white. We never
saw yet in nature a sky or a cloud pure white; so that here certainly
is one of the "fallacies," we will not call them falsehoods. But as
far as we can judge of nature's ideas of light and colour, it is her
object to tone them down, and to give us very little, if any, of this
raw white, and we would not say that the old masters did not follow
her method of doing it. But we will say, that the object of art, at
any rate, is to make all things look agreeable; and that human eyes
cannot bear without pain those raw whites and too searching lights;
and that nature has given to them an ever present power of glazing
down and reducing them, when she added to the eye the sieve, our
eyelashes, through which we look, which we employ for this purpose,
and desire not to be dragged at any time--"Sub curru nimium propinqui
solis."

After this praise of white, one does not expect--"I think nature
mixes yellow with almost every one of her hues;" but this is said
merely in aversion to purple. "I think the first approach to
viciousness of colour in any master, is commonly indicated chiefly by
a prevalence of purple and an absence of yellow." "I am equally
certain that Turner is distinguished from all the vicious colourists
of the present day, by the foundation of all his tones being black,
yellow, and intermediate greys, while the tendency of our common
glare-seekers is invariably to pure, cold, impossible purples."

"Silent nymph, with curious eye,
Who the _purple_ evening lie,