partment, his colour. The result has been melancholy enough; an
inferior, flimsy, and flashy style has been engendered, utterly
abhorrent from any sound and true principle of colouring. Even in
Rubens, there is this tendency to the flimsy, to the light glitter,
rather than to the substantial glory of the art: but it is much
disguised under his daring hand, and by the use of that lucid vehicle
which, independent of subject, and even colour, is pleasing in itself.
There is always power in his pictures, for his mind was vigorous to a
degree; a power that throws down the gauntlet, as it were, with a
confidence that disdains any disguise or fear of criticism: a
confidence the more manifest in the defects, particularly of grossness
and anachronism, bringing them out strongly palpable and conspicuous
by a more vivid colouring, more determined opposition of dark and
light,--as if he should say, behold, I dare. And this power has the
usual charm of all power; it commands respect, and too often
obeisance. But Rubens' colour requires Rubens' power in the other
departments of art. To endeavour to imitate him in that respect, with
any the least weakness either of hand or design, is only to set the
weakness in a more glaring light, dressing it up, not in the gorgeous
array and real jewellery of the court, but in the foil and tinsel
glitter, and mock regality of a low theatrical pageantry. And this
would be the case even if we had in use his luscious vehicle; but with
an inferior one, too often with a bad one, the case of weakness is
aggravated, and not unseldom the presumption and the failure of an
attempt the more conspicuous.

I do not mean to say, that Rubens is universally imitated among us;
but where his peculiar style is not imitated, the vitiation to which
it has led is seen, in the general tendency of our artists, to shun
the deep and sober tones of the Italian school, and, as their phrase
is, to put as much daylight as possible into their works. But even
here I would pause to suggest, that _light_, daylight, in its _great_
characteristic, is more lustrous than white, and will be produced
rather by the lower than the lighter tones, as may be seen in the
pictures of Claude, whose key of colouring is many degrees lower than
in pictures which affect his light, without his means of attaining it.

It is surprising that there should be such inconsistency in the
decisions of taste; but this title of colourist has been bestowed
chi