*

87. There is much ingenuity, and some truth, here, but the reader, as in
other of Lord Lindsay's speculations, must receive his conclusions with
qualification. It is the natural character of strong effects of color,
as of high light, to confuse outlines; and it is a necessity in all fine
harmonies of color that many tints should merge imperceptibly into their
following or succeeding ones:--we believe Lord Lindsay himself would
hardly wish to mark the hues of the rainbow into divided zones, or to
show its edge, as of an iron arch, against the sky, in order that it
might no longer reflect (a reflection of which we profess ourselves up
to this moment altogether unconscious) "that lax morality which
confounds the limits of right and wrong." Again, there is a character of
energy in all warm colors, as of repose in cold, which necessarily
causes the former to be preferred by painters of savage subject--that
is to say, commonly by the coarsest and most degraded;--but when
sensuality is free from ferocity, it leans to blue more than to red (as
especially in the flesh tints of Guido), and when intellect prevails
over this sensuality, its first step is invariably to put more red into
every color, and so "rubor est virtutis color." We hardly think Lord
Lindsay would willingly include Luca Giordano among his spiritual
painters, though that artist's servant was materially enriched by
washing the ultramarine from the brushes with which he painted the
Ricardi palace; nor would he, we believe, degrade Ghirlandajo to
fellowship with the herd of the sensual, though in the fresco of the
vision of Zacharias there are seventeen different reds in large masses,
and not a shade of blue. The fact is, there is no color of the spectrum,
as there is no note of music, whose key and prevalence may not be made
pure in expression, and elevating in influence, by a great and good
painter, or degraded to unhallowed purpose by a base one.

88. We are sorry that our author "cannot unreservedly praise the
coloring of Angelico;" but he is again curbed by his unhappy system of
balanced perfectibility, and must quarrel with the gentle monk because
he finds not in him the flames of Giorgione, nor the tempering of
Titian, nor the melody of Cagliari. This curb of perfection we took
between our teeth from the first, and we will give up our hearts to
Angelico without drawback or reservation. His color is, in its sphere
and to its purpose, as perfect as hu