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nu a quality

which the illuminated dead color would be felt in nature ferent from the unilluminated bright one, is what artists › perpetually aiming at, and connoisseurs talking nonsense out, under the name of tone." The want of tone in picres is caused by objects looking bright in their own positive e, and not by illumination, and by the consequent want of isation of the raising of their hues by light.

e."

t sense and

The first of these meanings of the word "tone" is liable to confounded with what is commonly called "aerial perspecBut aerial perspective is the expression of space, by any Difference be- means whatsoever, sharpness of edge, vividness of en tone in its color, etc., assisted by greater pitch of shadow, and ial perspective. requires only that objects should be detached from ch other, by degrees of intensity in proportion to their disnce, without requiring that the difference between the farthest d nearest should be in positive quantity the same that nature s put. But what I have called "tone" requires that there ould be the same sum of difference, as well as the same division differences.

The pictures

fect in relation

ut.

Now the finely toned pictures of the old masters are, in this spect, some of the notes of nature played two or three octaves low her key; the dark objects in the middle distance having precisely the same relation to the light of the sky the old masters which they have in nature, but the light being middle tints to necessarily infinitely lowered, and the mass of the shadow deepened in the same degree. I have ten been struck, when looking at a camera-obscuro on a dark y, with the exact resemblance the image bore to one of the est pictures of the old masters; all the foliage coming dark ainst the sky, and nothing being seen in its mass but here and ere the isolated light of a silvery stem or an unusually illuined cluster of leafage.

And conse

:

Now if this could be done consistently, and all the notes of nature given in this way an octave or two down, it ntly totally would be right and necessary so to do but be it middle tints to observed, not only does nature surpass us in power of obtaining light as much as the sun surpasses ite paper, but she also infinitely surpasses us in her power

e in relation

-kness.

of shade. Her deepest shades are void spaces from which no light whatever is reflected to the eye; ours are black surfaces from which, paint as black as we may, a great deal of light is still reflected, and which, placed against one of nature's deep bits of gloom, would tell as distinct light. Here we are then, with white paper for our highest light, and visible illumined surface for our deepest shadow, set to run the gauntlet against nature, with the sun for her light, and vacuity for her gloom. It is evident that she can well afford to throw her material objects dark against the brilliant aerial tone of her sky, and yet give in those objects themselves a thousand intermediate distances and tones before she comes to black, or to anything like it-all the illumined surfaces of her objects being as distinctly and vividly brighter than her nearest and darkest shadows, as the sky is brighter than those illumined surfaces. But if we, against our poor, dull obscurity of yellow paint, instead of sky, insist on having the same relation of shade in material objects, we go down to the bottom of our scale at once; and what in the world are we to do then? Where are all our intermediate distances to come from?-how are we to express the aerial relations among the parts themselves, for instance, of foliage, whose most distant boughs are already almost black?-how are we to come up from this to the foreground, and when we have done so, how are we to express the distinction between its solid parts, already as dark as we can make them, and its vacant hollows, which nature has marked sharp and clear and black, among its lighted surfaces? It cannot but be evident at a glance, that if to any one of the steps from one distance to another, we give the same quantity of difference in pitch of shade which nature does, we must pay for this expenditure of our means by totally missing half a dozen distances, not a whit less important or marked, and so sacrifice a multitude of truths, to obtain one. And this, accordingly was the means by which the old masters obtained their (truth?) of tone. They chose those steps of distance which are the most conspicuous and noticeable that for instance from sky to foliage, or from clouds to hills and they gave these their precise pitch of difference in shade with exquisite accuracy of imitation. Their means were then exhausted, and they were obliged to leave their trees flat

asses of mere filled-up outline, and to omit the truths of space every individual part of their picture by the thousand. But

is they did not care for; it saved them trouble; they reached eir grand end, imitative effect; they thrust home just at the laces where the common and careless eye looks for imitation, nd they attained the broadest and most faithful appearance of

uth of tone which art can exhibit.

- General false

stem.

But they are prodigals, and foolish prodigals, in art; they vish their whole means to get one truth, and leave themselves owerless when they should seize a thousand. And is it indeed worthy of being called a truth, when we have a vast od of such a history given us to relate, to the fulness of which neither our limits nor our language are adequate, stead of giving all its parts abridged in the order of their imortance, to omit or deny the greater part of them, that we may vell with verbal fidelity on two or three? Nay, the very truth which the rest are sacrificed is rendered falsehood by their sence, the relation of the tree to the sky is marked as an imossibility by the want of relation of its parts to each other.

pect.

Turner starts from the beginning with a totally different inciple. He boldly takes pure white (and justly, for it is the gn of the most intense sunbeams) for his highest light, and lamp-black for his deepest shade; and between The principle Turner in this these he makes every degree of shade indicative of a separate degree of distance,* giving each step of proach, not the exact difference in pitch which it would have nature, but a difference bearing the same proportion to that ich his sum of possible shade bears to the sum of nature's ade; so that an object half way between his horizon and his reground, will be exactly in half tint of force, and every inute division of intermediate space will have just its proporonate share of the lesser sum, and no more. Hence where the d masters expressed one distance, he expresses a hundred ; and here they said furlongs, he says leagues. Which of these modes procedure be most agreeable with truth, I think I may safely

* Of course I am not speaking here of treatment of chiaroscuro, but of at quantity of depth of shade by which, cæteris paribus, a near object will ceed a distant one. For the truth of the systems of Turner and the old asters, as regards chiaroscuro, vide Chapter III. of this Section, § 8.

leave the reader to decide for himself.

He will see in this very first instance, one proof of what we above asserted, that the deceptive imitation of nature is inconsistent with real truth; for the very means by which the old masters attained the apparent accuracy of tone which is so satisfying to the eye, compelled them to give up all idea of real relations of retirement, and to represent a few successive and marked stages of distance, like the scenes of a theatre, instead of the imperceptible, multitudinous, symmetrical retirement of nature, who is not more careful to separate her nearest bush from her farthest one, than to separate the nearest bough of that bush from the one next to it.

$ 8. Comparison

"Phocion,"

Take for instance, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced-the work of a really great and intellectual mind, the quiet Nicholas Poussin, in our own National Gallery, with the traveller washing his feet. The first idea. of N. Poussin's We receive from this picture is, that it is evening, and all the light coming from the horizon. Not so. It is full moon, the light coming steep from the left, as is shown by the shadow of the stick on the right-hand pedestal,―(for if the sun were not very high, that shadow could not lose itself half way down, and if it were not lateral, the shadow would slope, instead of being vertical.) Now, ask yourself, and answer candidly, if those black masses of foliage, in which scarcely any form is seen but the outline, be a true representation of trees under noon day sunlight, sloping from the left, bringing out, as it necessarily would do, their masses into golden green, and marking every leaf and bough with sharp shadow and sparkling light. The only truth in the picture is the exact pitch of relief against the sky of both trees and hills, and to this the organization of the hills, the intricacy of the foliage, and everything indicative either of the nature of the light, or the character of the objects, are unhesitatingly sacrificed. So much falsehood does it cost to obtain two apparent truths of tone. Or take, as a still more glaring instance, No. 260 in the Dulwich Gallery, where the trunks of the trees, even of those farthest off, on the left, are as black as paint can make them, and there is not, and cannot be, the slightest increase of force, or any marking what

soever of distance by color, or any other means, between them and the foreground.

$9. With Turner's

Argus."

Compare with these, Turner's treatment of his materials in the Mercury and Argus. He has here his light actually coming from the distance, the sun being nearly in the centre of the picture, and a violent relief of objects against it Mercury and would be far more justifiable than in Poussin's case. But this dark relief is used in its full force only with the nearest leaves of the nearest group of foliage overhanging the foreground from the left; and between these and the more distant members of the same group, though only three or four yards separate, distinct aerial perspective and intervening mist and light are shown; while the large tree in the centre, though very dark, as being very near, compared with all the distance, is much diminished in intensity of shade from this nearest group of leaves, and is faint compared with all the foreground. It is true that this tree has not, in consequence, the actual pitch of shade against the sky which it would have in nature; but it has precisely as much as it possibly can have, to leave it the same proportionate relation to the objects near at hand. And it cannot but be evident to the thoughtful reader, that whatever trickery or deception may be the result of a contrary mode of treatment, this is the only scientific or essentially truthful system, and that what it loses in tone it gains in aerial perspective.

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10. And with the "Datur Hora Quieti."

Compare again the last vignette in Rogers's Poems, the Datur Hora Quieti," where everything, even the darkest parts of the trees, is kept pale and full of graduation; even the bridge where it crosses the descending stream of sunshine, rather lost in the light than relieved against it, until we come up to the foreground, and then the vigorous local black of the plough throws the whole picture into distance and sunshine. I do not know anything in art which can for a moment be set beside this drawing for united intensity of light and repose.

Observe, I am not at present speaking of the beauty or desirableness of the system of the old masters; it may be sublime, and affecting, and ideal, and intellectual, and a great deal more; but all I am concerned with at present is, that it