ornamented with a wreath of flowers, the greater part of the flowers ought to be blue, yellow, and white. If we place red flowers upon such a ground, they will tend to become orange rather than purple, and ought to have a fringe of green leaves contiguous to the ground. On the contrary, when the ground is of a greenish hue, red and rose-coloured flowers must predominate over the others; and when the ground is of the hue of dead leaves, the blue, violet, white, and rose flowers detach themselves completely. It is important that painters should understand this Law of Contrast in colouring. Suppose, for example, a painter have to imitate two contiguous stripes of red and blue upon a white ground. He perceives them changed in hue, by the mutual effect of each upon the other, the red becoming more and more orange as it approaches the blue, and the latter more and more green as it approaches the red; but if he understands the law of contrast, he will know at once how to treat the illusion, and will produce the true effect by making his stripes respectively of a simple blue and a simple red, reduced in some parts by light or by shade. Whereas, if he does not understand the secret of the illusion, he will proceed to paint the stripes of a greenish-blue and yellowish-red, and so produce a false and exaggerated effect, from not knowing that the greenish and yellowish hues of the stripes are merely the result of red and blue coming together, and that they will reproduce themselves on his canvass if he makes the one stripe simple red and the other simple blue. Another point which it is most important that artists should bear in mind is, that if, after working long at one part of a picture, they turn their eyes to another part, that other part will not appear of its own colour, but of a hue resulting from a blending of the complementary colour of the first part of the picture with the actual colour of the second. For example, if they have been painting a lady's red mantle, and then turn to look at the face, the complexion will appear of a greenish hue,—— which if the artist ignorantly reproduce on his canvass, he will most grievously sin against the truth, and deservedly earn the grievous displeasure of his fair sitter. In truth, so important is it to thoroughly understand the action of the "accidental colours," that it is a fact that even artists who are gifted with a fine eye for colour will produce poor effects if they make their sittings too long at a time. An ignorance of this law, and a habit of long sittings (things which generally go together, for no one who understands the former will indulge in the latter), will produce even with naturally fine colourists a colouring dull and inferior to that of artists who, though less finely organised, give way more to first impressions; or in other words, who take in the impression of the model more rapidly, before their eye has had time to become fatigued, and who do not too frequently return to their work to modify it, to efface, and to repaint,-a process which infallibly produces a poor effect, and makes the colouring "muddled." It is good for artists, then, as well as for other men, to know to "let well alone;" and by some members of the profession, the maxim is much needed. We do not generally make a sufficient use of colour as a beautifier of our dwellings. This is partly owing to the fact that the physical organisation of Northern nations is not so susceptible to the impressions of colour as is that of Southern nations, even though these latter be intellectually our inferiors. It is in Tropical countries, where light is most dazzling, that colour is most gorgeous and abundant. These are the native climes of the sapphire, the diamond, and the emerald,-of sunsets unspeakably gorgeous, and of night-skies through the azure of whose transparent depths the eye wanders upwards until it loses itself as if on the threshold of other worlds. The savannahs there are covered with perennial flowers; the pillared forests are linked in a maze of beauty by the scarlet and other brilliant blossoms of the trailers that hang in festoons from tree to tree; and the green mantle of earth flashes every where into colours beneath the flood of sunshine which keeps all nature a-pulsing to the rhythm of its subtle and inconceivably rapid vibrations. Colour, like its parent Light, dies away towards the Poles; and as the constitution of nations is ever in harmony with the region where they dwell, the susceptibility of us Hyperboreans to colour is far inferior to that of the race who produce the magic dyes of India, or the still nobler one who built the glowing walls of the Alhambra. Even our neighbours the French excel us in this matter; and it is not overstating the case to say, that there is no civilised people on the earth who do not equal or excel us in a taste and passion for colour. We are too fond of paleness, colourlessness, in our interiors. We shrink from bright colours, because we do not know how to use them, and believe we show taste when we have produced an effect which is simply commonplace. With M. Chevreul for guide, let us offer a word or two upon this subject. We shall begin with the more grand and artistic parts of a mansion, and then come quickly down to remarks which may be as interesting to the single gentleman with his triplet of rooms in the Temple, as to the more stately occupants of palatial edifices. Enter a gallery of sculpture, and see what hints about colour there suggest themselves. Here we have our old friend the Venus de Medici,-showing the perfection of physical beauty, but with as little as possible of the divine either in her head or attitude. Next to her, in not uncongenial contiguity, is Dannecker's Ariadne on the Panther,—exhibiting a voluptuousness of position, combined with an exquisite charm in the undulating contour of the picturesquely posed figure. Here also is Kiess's Amazon in bronze-by no means a material for representing the soft figures of the female sex, but appropriate in this case, owing to the greater part of the composition being occupied by the rearing horse and attacking wild-beast, and to the circumstance of the attitude of the female rider representing nothing but masculine energy and daring. Finally, we shall say, we have that divinest of statues, the Apollo Belvidere. in which life and noble power ray from every limb. Now, if those various pieces of sculpture are placed together, of course they must all be viewed against the same background—namely, that of the wall of the room in which they stand. But suppose-in order to bring out the peculiar qualities of various colours as backgrounds-it were proposed to us to take each of these sculptures by itself, and assign to it a wall of such a colour as would show it off to the best advantage. Then we would remark, in the first place, that whatever may be the case when a piece of cloth is hung immediately around a statue, the walls of a gallery must be considered as giving rise to effects, not of reflection, but of contrast. Accordingly, it will be found that statues of white marble or stone, as well as plaster casts, stand out well in a gallery whose walls are of a pearly-grey colour. But suppose we wish to attain effects not generally aimed at, with the several pieces of sculpture above namedthen it will be found that if you place the Venus de Medici against a wall of blue-grey, the statue of the Cyprian goddess forthwith acquires a warm colour, which many sculptors prize so highly. Take the Ariadne, and place her in a room painted green, and forthwith the deserted of Bacchus flushes all over with a faint rosy tint, such as she is seen in her chamber at Frankfort, where the light is let in upon her through rosecoloured glass. For the divine Apollo, such tinting would be inadmissible. He must stand forth in the simple majesty of pure white; and in order to produce this effect, the colour of the wall should be chamois or orange-grey, which tends to neutralise any redness of hue in the marble or plaster of the statue. As to the tone of colour used upon the walls, cæteris paribus, it ought to be lower the brighter we wish the sculptures to be. Finally, coming to deal with Kiess's Amazon, and bronzes in general, it must be remembered that the metallic alloy of which they are composed yields two very different tints, one green, which the metal acquires by exposure to the - action of the atmosphere; the other the peculiar golden tint which it possesses when not oxidised. If we wish to heighten this green tint, the colour of the walls of the gallery must be red; while, if we wish to bring out the golden tint of the bronze, the walls must be blue. Let us turn now to a picture-gallery. Here the first thing that strikes us is, how badly paintings look when thus crowded together. Even supposing that they have been arranged by a man of taste, and that they are not too numerous to compel him frequently to do violence to his artistic feelings, still the ubiquitous melange of colour, and the dazzling headachy effect of the multitude of gilt frames, produce an impression upon the spectator by no means favourable to his appreciation of the pictures. In truth, it is only the intelligent connoisseur who, in such a case, can experience the effect which the artist has wished to produce; and this he does, not only by knowing the best point of view, but by fixing his attention so wholly upon the work as to be unconscious of the surrounding pictures, or even of the very frame. In fact, frames in general are no better than necessary evils; for, though they are requisite to isolate a picture from surrounding objects, yet the contiguity of the frame to the picture is exceedingly detrimental to the illusion of perspective. It is this which explains the difference between the effect of a framed picture, and the effect of the same picture when viewed through an opening which allows of our seeing neither frame nor limits. The effect then produced resembles the illusion of the diorama. In the case of not a few pictures, taste is best shown in knowing how little frame is necessary. The colour of the wall, and nature of surrounding objects, must be considered in judging of this. I remember seeing a painting by a German artist, which represented the interior of a Gothic ruin, with a snowy landscape visible through the open archway of the door, and some snow, drifted in, lying upon the steps and stone floor inside. The perspective was exquisite, magical; and the drifted snow upon |