rained by
artistical laws.

This characteristic of the style partly follows in necessary connexion
with those named above. For, so soon as the workman is left free to
represent what subjects he chooses, he must look to the nature that is
round him for material, and will endeavor to represent it as he sees it,
with more or less accuracy according to the skill he possesses, and with
much play of fancy, but with small respect for law. There is, however, a
marked distinction between the imaginations of the Western and Eastern
races, even when both are left free; the Western, or Gothic, delighting
most in the representation of facts, and the Eastern (Arabian, Persian,
and Chinese) in the harmony of colors and forms. Each of these
intellectual dispositions has its particular forms of error and abuse,
which, though I have often before stated, I must here again briefly
explain; and this the rather, because the word Naturalism is, in one of
its senses, justly used as a term of reproach, and the questions
respecting the real relations of art and nature are so many and so
confused throughout all the schools of Europe at this day, that I
cannot clearly enunciate any single truth without appearing to admit, in
fellowship with it, some kind of error, unless the reader will bear with
me in entering into such an analysis of the subject as will serve us for
general guidance.

Sec. XLII. We are to remember, in the first place, that the arrangement
of colors and lines is an art analogous to the composition[60] of music,
and entirely independent of the representation of facts. Good coloring
does not necessarily convey the image of anything but itself. It
consists in certain proportions and arrangements of rays of light, but
not in likenesses to anything. A few touches of certain greys and
purples laid by a master's hand on white paper, will be good coloring;
as more touches are added beside them, we may find out that they were
intended to represent a dove's neck, and we may praise, as the drawing
advances, the perfect imitation of the dove's neck. But the good
coloring does not consist in that imitation, but in the abstract
qualities and relations of the grey and purple.

In like manner, as soon as a great sculptor begins to shape his work out
of the block, we shall see that its lines are nobly arranged, and of
noble character. We may not have the slightest idea for what the forms
are intended, whether they are of man or beast, of veget