tty.

230. Both of these pictures are oil-paintings. The third, Mr. Burne
Jones's "Bridal," is a small water-color drawing, scarcely more than a
sketch; but full and deep in such color as it admits. Any careful
readers of my recent lectures at Oxford know that I entirely ignore the
difference of material between oil and water as diluents of color, when
I am examining any grave art question: nor shall I hereafter, throughout
this paper, take notice of it. Nor do I think it needful to ask the
pardon of any of the three artists for confining the reader's attention
at present to comparatively minor and elementary examples of their
works. If I can succeed in explaining the principles involved in them,
their application by the reader will be easily extended to the enjoyment
of better examples.

This drawing of Mr. Jones's, however, is far less representative of his
scale of power than either of the two pieces already described, which
have both cost their artists much care and time; while this little
water-color has been perhaps done in the course of a summer afternoon.
It is only about seven inches by nine: the figures of the average size
of Angelico's on any altar predella; and the heads, of those on an
average Corinthian or Syracusan coin. The bride and bridegroom sit on a
slightly raised throne at the side of the picture, the bride nearest us;
her head seen in profile, a little bowed. Before them, the three
bridesmaids and their groomsmen dance in circle, holding each other's
hands, bare-footed, and dressed in long dark blue robes. Their figures
are scarcely detached from the dark background, which is a willful
mingling of shadow and light, as the artist chose to put them,
representing, as far as I remember, nothing in particular. The deep tone
of the picture leaves several of the faces in obscurity, and none are
drawn with much care, not even the bride's; but with enough to show that
her features are at least as beautiful as those of an ordinary Greek
goddess, while the depth of the distant background throws out her pale
head in an almost lunar, yet unexaggerated, light; and the white and
blue flowers of her narrow coronal, though _merely_ white and blue,
shine, one knows not how, like gems. Her bridegroom stoops forward a
little to look at her, so that we see his front face, and can see also
that he loves her.

231. Such being the respective effort and design of the three pictures,
although I put by, for the moment, a