ration from one
black square in it), nor the green more unquestionably green. Yet the
whole is pestilent and loathsome.

31. Now but one point more, and I have done with this subject for
to-day.

You must not think that this manifest brilliancy and Harlequin's-jacket
character is essential in the color school. The essential matter is only
that everything should be of _its own_ definite color: it may be
altogether sober and dark, yet the distinctness of hue preserved with
entire fidelity. Here, for instance, is a picture of Hogarth's,--one of
quite the most precious things we have in our galleries. It represents a
meeting of some learned society--gentlemen of the last century, very
gravely dressed, but who, nevertheless, as gentlemen pleasantly did in
that day,--you remember Goldsmith's weakness on the point--wear coats of
tints of dark red, blue, or violet. There are some thirty gentlemen in
the room, and perhaps seven or eight different tints of subdued
claret-color in their coats; and yet every coat is kept so distinctly of
its own proper claret-color, that each gentleman's servant would know
his master's.

Yet the whole canvas is so gray and quiet, that as I now hold it by this
Dutch landscape, with the vermilion jacket, you would fancy Hogarth's
had no color in it at all, and that the Dutchman was half-way to
becoming a Titian; whereas Hogarth's is a consummate piece of the most
perfect colorist school, which Titian could not beat, in its way; and
the Dutchman could no more paint half an inch of it than he could summon
a rainbow into the clouds.

32. Here then, you see, are, altogether, five works, all of the
absolutely pure color school:--

1. One, Indian,--Religious Art;
2. One, Florentine,--Religious Art;
3. One, English,--from Painted Chamber, Westminster,--Ethic Art;
4. One, English,--Hogarth,--Naturalistic Art;
5. One, English,--to-day sold in the High Street,--Caricaturist Art.

And of these, the Florentine and old English are divine work,
God-inspired; full, indeed, of faults and innocencies, but divine, as
good children are.

Then this by Hogarth is entirely wise and right; but worldly-wise, not
divine.

While the old Indian, and this, with which we feed our children at this
hour, are entirely damnable art;--every bit of it done by the direct
inspiration of the devil,--feeble, ridiculous,--yet mortally poisonous
to every noble quality in body and soul.

33. I have now, I hope, guarde