the pleasant Du Maurier, a drawing
representing two fashionable ladies discussing the afternoon's
occupation. One says: "It's quite too dull to see colours at Madame St.
Aldegonde's; suppose we go to the Old Masters' Exhibition!"

Rather too bad! but the ladies were not so altogether frivolous as might
at first appear. I am afraid _Punch_ meant that they were triflers who
looked upon colour in dress as important, and colour in pictures as a
thing which would do for a dull day. But they were not quite so far
astray as this! There are other things in pictures besides colour which
can be seen with indifferent light. But to match clear tint against
clear tint, and put together harmonies, there is no getting away from
the problem! It is all sheer, hard exercise; you want all your light for
it; there is no slurring or diluting, no "glazing" or "scumbling," and
it should form a part of the teaching, and yet it never does so, in our
academies and schools of art. A curious matter this is, that a painter's
training leaves this great resource of knowledge neglected, leaves the
whole thing to memory. Out of all the infinite possible harmonies only
getting what rise in the mind at the moment from the unseen. While
ladies who want to dress beautifully look at the things themselves, and
compare one with another. And how nicely they dress. If only painters
painted half as well. If the pictures in our galleries only looked half
as harmonious as the crowd of spectators below them! I would have it
part of every painter's training to practise some craft, or at least
that branch of some craft, which compels the choosing and arranging, in
due proportions for harmony, of clear, sharp glowing colours in some
definite material, from a full and lavish range of existing samples. It
is true that here and there a painter will arise who has by nature that
kind of instinct or memory, or whatever it is, that seems to feel
harmonies beforehand, note by note, and add them to one another with
infallible accuracy; but very few possess this, and for those who lack I
am urging this training. For it is a case of

"the little more and how much it is,
And the little less and what worlds away."

Millais hung a daring crimson sash over the creamy-white bed-quilt, in
the glow of the subdued night-lamp, in his picture of "Asleep," and we
all thought what a fine thing it was. But we have not thought it so fine
for the whole art world to burst into