aws of good painting are the same, whatever liquid
is employed to dissolve the pigments. But the technical management of
oil is more difficult than that of water-colour, and the impossibility
of using it with safety among books or prints, and its unavailableness
for note-book sketches and memoranda, are sufficient reasons for not
introducing it in a course of practice intended chiefly for students of
literature. On the contrary, in the exercises of artists, oil should be
the vehicle of colour employed from the first. The extended practice of
water-colour painting, as a separate skill, is in every way harmful to
the arts: its pleasant slightness and plausible dexterity divert the
genius of the painter from its proper aims, and withdraw the attention
of the public from excellence of higher claim; nor ought any man, who
has the consciousness of ability for good work, to be ignorant of, or
indolent in employing, the methods of making its results permanent as
long as the laws of Nature allow. It is surely a severe lesson to us in
this matter, that the best works of Turner could not be shown to the
public for six months without being destroyed,--and that his most
ambitious ones for the most part perished, even before they could be
shown. I will break through my law of reticence, however, so far as to
tell you that I have hope of one day interesting you greatly (with the
help of the Florentine masters), in the study of the arts of moulding
and painting porcelain; and to induce some of you to use your future
power of patronage in encouraging the various branches of this art, and
turning the attention of the workmen of Italy from the vulgar tricks of
minute and perishable mosaic to the exquisite subtilties of form and
colour possible in the perfectly ductile, afterwards unalterable clay.
And one of the ultimate results of such craftsmanship might be the
production of pictures as brilliant as painted glass,--as delicate as
the most subtle water-colours, and more permanent than the Pyramids.

129. And now to begin our own work. In order that we may know how
rightly to learn to draw and to paint, it will be necessary, will it
not, that we know first what we are to aim at doing;--what kind of
representation of nature is best?

I will tell you in the words of Lionardo. "That is the most praiseworthy
painting which has most conformity with the thing represented," "quella
pittura e piu laudabile, la quale ha piu conformita con la cos