and in
their place, and appear to have been aimed at. The foreground of the
Building of Carthage, and the greater part of the architecture of the
Fall, are equally heavy and evidently paint, if we compare them with
genuine passages of Claude's sunshine. There is a very grand and simple
piece of tone in the possession of J. Allnutt, Esq., a sunset behind
willows, but even this is wanting in refinement of shadow, and is crude
in its extreme distance. Not so with the recent Academy pictures; many
of their passages are absolutely faultless; all are refined and
marvellous, and with the exception of the Cicero's Villa, we shall find
few pictures painted within the last ten years which do not either
present us with perfect tone, or with some higher beauty, to which it is
necessarily sacrificed. If we glance at the requirements of nature, and
her superiority of means to ours, we shall see why and how it is
sacrificed.

Sec. 14. The two distinct qualities of light to be considered.

Light, with reference to the tone it induces on objects, is either to be
considered as neutral and white, bringing out local colors with
fidelity; or colored, and consequently modifying these local tints, with
its own. But the power of pure white light to exhibit local color is
strangely variable. The morning light of about nine or ten is usually
very pure; but the difference of its effect on different days,
independently of mere brilliancy, is as inconceivable as inexplicable.
Every one knows how capriciously the colors of a fine opal vary from day
to day, and how rare the lights are which bring them fully out. Now the
expression of the strange, penetrating, deep, neutral light, which,
while it _alters_ no color, brings every color up to the highest
possible pitch and key of pure, harmonious intensity, is the chief
attribute of finely-toned pictures by the great _colorists_ as opposed
to pictures of equally high tone, by masters who, careless of color, are
content, like Cuyp, to lose local tints in the golden blaze of absorbing
light.

Sec. 15. Falsehoods by which Titian attains the appearance of quality in
light.

Falsehood, in this neutral tone, if it may be so called, is a matter far
more of feeling than of proof, for any color is _possible_ under such
lights; it is meagreness and feebleness only which are to be avoided;
and these are rather matters of sensation than of reasoning. But it is
yet easy enough to prove by what exagg