rt, which are adopted for the sake of warm, are, in
good painters such as Vandyke, always blended with the silvery grey.

"Of the general tone of colour."--This part of the subject is treated
rather with regard to strict observation of nature, than its poetical
applicability to art. For surely there is a distinction; there should
be a tone of colour belonging to the subject, irrespective of the
actual colour of place or time of day, properly belonging to the
action represented. It is well observed, that the argentine or silvery
tone so much admired and sought after by amateurs, "is nothing but the
faithful imitation of the tone assumed by nature in countries where
the rays of the sun are not too perpendicular, every time that the air
is in that state of transparency required to temper to the necessary
degree the too brilliant blue of a pure sky, and itself to receive and
transmit this desirable silvery tone which delights the spectator." By
this it would appear that our artists' dreams of countries, _alio sub
sole_, are not likely to bring beauty of colour to their
pictures--that the fables of Eastern skies are, with regard to art,
fables; and though there is now always an attempt, and that by no mean
powers, to drag the spectators at our exhibitions under the very
chariot of the sun, "sub curru nimium propinqui solis," real beauty of
colour will be found much nearer home.

We are somewhat surprised by, as it would appear from the general
observations of De Burtin, an accidental truth which he has not
elsewhere followed to its consequences. "If pictures offend against
nature, and become cold by the employment of cold colours upon them,
such as black, white, blue, and green, either pure or bluish, and by
the omission of the glazings which the tone of the light requires, or
if they become so from the natural coldness of night and of snow, _not
remedied by art_, the painter ought to correct the fault in the manner
I have previously hinted at." In the following remark, we can see the
great defect in the colouring of Murillo's pictures, especially in his
backgrounds, who appears always to have painted on a wet and dingy
day. "But nothing can correct the cold of a sky concealed by the kind
of clouds last mentioned, or _rendered totally invisible by mist_." He
rescues the clear-obscure from the meaning commonly attached to it as
light and shade. "In the literal sense, this word means nothing but
the obscure which is at the sa