ightful
interest in it they never anticipated; while every hour so spent would
more and more exercise and mature the judgment.

A knowledge of the natural chalks, or colours of black, white, and red,
is indispensably necessary. So, a perfect acquaintance with the Three
Primitives, blue, red, and yellow, is of equal consequence; that blue
and yellow are brought together by red; and that all mixtures are the
scientific result of the union of these three, no _two_ of which will
produce the _third_. The result of the mixture of any _two_ gives the
_contrast_ to the absent _one_:--as red and blue, producing purple, is
the opposite to yellow; blue and yellow make green, the contrast to red;
red and yellow, producing orange, contrasts blue; the three, blended
together, gives us black: neutral tint is the result of the same
mixture. A perfect knowledge of mixing tints, from this scale, will
produce all the _compounds_ necessary to art, and their admixtures may
be varied _ad infinitum_.

The neutral tint mentioned may be so varied, as to act in perfect union
as the _shadow_ to any one of the colours composing it.

The modes or systems of obtaining these results of colour, as practised
by the greatest schools, are exceedingly different. Sir Joshua Reynolds
says: 'They may be reduced to three. The first may be called the Roman
manner, where the colours are of a full and strong body, such as are
found in the Transfiguration. The next is that harmony which is produced
by what the ancients called the corruption of colours, by mixing and
breaking them till there is a general union in the whole: this may be
called the Bolognian style. The last manner belongs properly to the
ornamental style, which we call the Venetian, being first practised at
Venice; but it is perhaps better learned from Rubens. Here the brightest
colours possible are admitted with the two extremes of warm and cold,
and those reconciled by being dispersed over the picture, till the whole
appears like a bunch of flowers.

'As it is from the Dutch school the art of breaking colour may be
learned, so we may recommend here an attention to the works of Watteau,
for excellence in the florid style of painting.

'To all these manners there are some _general_ rules, that never must be
neglected. First, that the same colour which makes the largest mass be
_diffused_, and appear to revive in different parts of the picture; for
a single colour will make a spot or blot. Even