His powers in equal ranks and fair array,
But with the occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream."

_Essay on Criticism._

[69] I am describing from an MS., _circa_ 1300, of Gregory's
Decretalia, in my own possession.

[70] One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice,
is little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes
of scattered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe
great part of their power to infinitude of divisions; order being
marked through this division.

[71] I fully believe that the strange gray gloom, accompanied by
considerable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art,
must be owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French
landscape always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the
dark mirror, and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the
veil of its perversion.

[72] Various other parts of this subject are entered into,
especially in their bearing on the ideal of painting, in Modern
Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii.

[73] In all the best arrangements of color, the delight occasioned
by their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be
reasoned about; we like it just as we like an air in music, but
cannot reason any refractory person into liking it, if they do not:
and yet there is distinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a good
taste and bad taste respecting it, as also in music.

[74] "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made;
but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called
ecclesiastical sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated
condition, forms one of the principal elements of "Puseyism,"--I use
this word regretfully, no other existing which will serve for
it,--had been known and felt in our wild northern districts long
before.

APPENDIX.

I.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

NOTE 1, p. 42.--"_Principle of the stereoscope._"

247. I am sorry to find a notion current among artists, that they can,
in some degree, imitate in a picture the effect of the stereoscope, by
confusion of lines. There are indeed one or two artifices