rinciple of chiaroscuro. Both high light and deep
shadow are used in equal quantity and only in points.

The second point to which I wish at present to direct attention has
reference to the _arrangement_ of light and shade. It is the constant
habit of nature to use both her highest lights and deepest shadows in
exceedingly small quantity; always in points, never in masses. She will
give a large mass of tender light in sky or water, impressive by its
quantity, and a large mass of tender shadow relieved against it, in
foliage, or hill, or building; but the light is always subdued if it be
extensive--the shadow always feeble if it be broad. She will then fill
up all the rest of her picture with middle tints and pale grays of some
sort or another, and on this quiet and harmonious whole, she will touch
her high lights in spots--the foam of an isolated wave--the sail of a
solitary vessel--the flash of the sun from a wet roof--the gleam of a
single whitewashed cottage--or some such sources of local brilliancy,
she will use so vividly and delicately as to throw everything else into
definite shade by comparison. And then taking up the gloom, she will use
the black hollows of some overhanging bank, or the black dress of some
shaded figure, or the depth of some sunless chink of wall or window, so
sharply as to throw everything else into definite light by comparison;
thus reducing the whole mass of her picture to a delicate middle tint,
approaching, of course, here to light, and there to gloom; but yet
sharply separated from the utmost degrees either of the one or the
other.

Sec. 9. Neglect or contradiction of this principle by writers on art.

Sec. 10. And consequent misguiding of the student.

Now it is a curious thing that none of our writers on art seem to have
noticed the great principle of nature in this respect. They all talk of
deep shadow as a thing that may be given in quantity,--one fourth of the
picture, or, in certain effects, much more. Barry, for instance, says
that the practice of the great painters, who "best understood the
effects of chiaroscuro," was, for the most part, to make the mass of
middle tint larger than the light, and the mass of dark larger than the
masses of light and middle tint together, _i.e._, occupying more than
one-half of the picture. Now I do not know what we are to suppose is
meant by "understanding chiaroscuro." If it means being able to
manufacture agreeable patterns in the sha