straggling over each other, or going
wrong and coming right again, or fading away altogether; and if we can
make anything of them quite out, that part of the drawing is wrong, or
incomplete.

Sec. 13. Only, observe, the method by which the confusion is obtained may
vary considerably according to the distance and scale of the picture
itself; for very curious effects are produced upon all paintings by the
distance of the eye from them. One of these is the giving a certain
softness to all colors, so that hues which would look coarse or bald if
seen near, may sometimes safely be left, and are left, by the great
workmen in their large works, to be corrected by the kind of _bloom_
which the distance of thirty or forty feet sheds over them. I say,
"sometimes," because this optical effect is a very subtle one, and seems
to take place chiefly on certain colors, dead fresco colors especially;
also the practice of the great workmen is very different, and seems much
to be regulated by the time at their disposal. Tintoret's picture of
Paradise, with 500 figures in it, adapted to a supposed distance of from
fifty to a hundred feet, is yet colored so tenderly that the nearer it
is approached the better it looks; nor is it at all certain that the
color which is wrong near, will look right a little way off, or even a
great way off: I have never seen any of our Academy portraits made to
look like Titians by being hung above the line: still, distance _does_
produce a definite effect on pictorial color, and in general an
improving one. It also deepens the relative power of all strokes and
shadows. A touch of shade which, seen near, is all but invisible, and,
as far as effect on the picture is concerned, quite powerless, will be
found, a little way off, to tell as a definite shadow, and to have a
notable result on all that is near it; and so markedly is this the case,
that in all fine and first-rate drawing there are many passages in which
if we _see_ the touches we are putting on, we are doing too much; they
must be put on by the feeling of the hand only, and have their effect on
the eye when seen in unison, a little way off. This seems strange; but I
believe the reason of it is, that, seen at some distance, the parts of
the touch or touches are gathered together, and their relations truly
shown; while, seen near, they are scattered and confused. On a large
scale, and in common things, the phenomenon is of constant occurrence;
the "dirt ba