and blending them by means of brushes dipped in an essential oil, in which these crayons are soluble: thus combining the pencil and crayon in the same process of painting. Diag. Crossed Orange... Tenne... Jacynth Dragon's head REMARKS.-Heraldry, the most arbitrary of the sciences, having no foundation whatever in nature, has nevertheless employed colours with more consistent classification than the more natural and legitimate arts, and being intimately connected with painting in the emblazoning of arms and the illuminating of missals, books, deeds, and treaties; and being also of occasional reference to higher art, a brief notice of heraldic colouring and its symbols may be considered as a useful appendage to a work on colours. also serve, by the comparison of colours, jewels, &c. to denote the colours themselves, and identify their names according to natural resemblances. The present Table may CHAPTER XXIII. ON VEHICLES AND VARNISHES. "How many fondly waste the studious hour Shee. Since colours and pigments are liable to material influence, and changes of effect, from the materials employed in painting for tempering, combining, distributing, and securing them on their grounds in the various modes of the art, the powers and properties of vehicles and varnishes are of hardly less importance than those of colours themselves; they are, therefore, an essential branch of our subject, and an inquiry of interminable interest among artists. Vehicles, which term is borrowed from pharmacy, are, indeed, among the chief materials and indispensable means of painting, and give names to its principal modes or genera, under the titles of painting in water, in oil, in varnish, &c. we will consider them, therefore, in each of these respects. Though originally few and simple, vehicles have been extremely diversified by composition and addition, suited to the various purposes and fancies of artists, so as to have become a subject of no mean extent and intricacy; to explicate which perfectly is as far from our hope as our intention, which is to treat of it in a general way, with such hints and remarks as have sprung from our own observation and experience, and may tend to improvement in practice. Speculation, and enquiry into the practices of the old masters and various schools of painting, concerning the secret mixtures they employed as vehicles, are at once uncertain and fruitless in these times, when the properties of the substances employed are so much better understood. The questions for the artist now are, what substances are the fittest to be employed? and what mixtures are best authorized by experience and chemical science for producing the effects he requires? and to this we shall direct our attention in reference to the various modes of practice. It is observable that the colours of pigments bear out with effects differing according to the liquids with which they are combined, and the substances those liquids hold in solution, which in some instances obscure or depress, and in others enliven or exalt the colours; in the first case by the tinge and opacity of the fluid, and in the latter, by its colourless transparency, and sometimes also much more so by a refractive power; as in varnishes made of pure resinous substances, which have a very evident and peculiarly exalting effect upon colours, that continues when they are dry; because resins form a glossy transparent cement, while the media, formed by expressed oils, become horny, or semi-opaque. And this principle applies also to aqueous and spirituous vehicles in waterpainting, according to the nature of the gums, or other substances they may hold in solution. I. WATER VEHICLES. The most natural or fit distribution of vehicles is into those of water, oils, and their mediums or compounds; under which heads we proceed to regard them, and the various substances employed as additions, according to the variety of practice. As the action of aqueous liquids, and their solvents upon colours, is stronger and more immediate than that of oils and varnishes, it is of great importance to the water-colour painter that he should attend to the pureness of his water. He ought to use no other than distilled water; or, wanting this, he should use rain-water filtered, which is next in purity to distilled water. In all hard and impure waters, colours are disposed to separate and curdle, so that it is often impossible a clear flowing wash, or gradation of colour, should be obtained with them. Solution of gums, ox-gall, &c. correct, without entirely overcoming these defects of the water; but they are often inconvenient, if not injurious: we recommend, therefore, |