t or it may be wrong, according to
the purpose the painter may have; I only mean to assert, that nature
will bear the changes and not offend any sense. The absolute
naturalness, then, of the colour of nature, in its strictest and most
limited sense, local and aerial, is not so necessary as that the eye
cannot be gratified without it. And it follows, that agreeability of
colour does not depend upon this strict naturalness.

I said, that it is of the first importance that the colouring be
agreeable _per se_; that, without any regard to a subject, the eye
should be gratified by the general tone, the harmony of the parts, and
the quality--namely, whether it be opaque or transparent, and to what
degree. There are certain things that we greatly admire on this very
account--such as all precious gems, polished and lustrous stones and
marbles, especially those into which we can look as into a transparent
depth.

A picture, therefore, cannot be said to be well coloured unless this
peculiar quality of agreeability be in it. To attain this, much
exactness may be sacrificed with safety. It should be considered
indispensable.

And this perfect liberty of altering to a certain degree the
naturalness of colouring, leads properly to that second essential--its
adaptation to a subject, or its _expressing the sentiment_. For it is
manifest, that if we can, without offending, alter the whole aspect of
nature in most common scenes, we can still more surely do so when the
scenes are at all ideal or out of the common character. And we can do
it likewise without a sacrifice of truth, in the higher sense of
_truth_, as a term of art or of poetry.

For the mind also _gives its own colouring_, or is unobservant of some
colours which the eye presents, and makes from all presented to it its
own selections and combinations, and suits them to its own conception
and creation. It has always been admitted that the painter's mind does
this with objects of form, omitting much, generalizing or selecting
few particulars. Now if this power be admitted with regard to objects
themselves, as to their forms and actual presence, why should it not,
with equal propriety, be extended to the colours of those objects,
even though they have a sensible effect upon the scenes which are
before us? But, as was said, _the mind colours_; it is not the slave
to the organ of sight, and in the painter, as in the poet, asserts its
privilege of _making_, delighting even to "e