of enjoyment: he
gives a passage of rich, involved, exquisitely wrought colour, then
passes away into slight, and pale and simple colour; he paints for a
minute or two with intense decision, then suddenly becomes, as the
spectator thinks, slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have
_taken_ any more decision from him just then; you have had as much as is
good for you; he paints over a great space of his picture forms of the
most rounded and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a
freak, gives you a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn.
Perhaps the most exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world of
painting is the arrow point, laid sharp against the white side and among
the flowing hair of Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very
little contrast will sometimes serve to make an entire group of forms
interesting which would otherwise have been valueless. There is a good
deal of picturesque material, for instance, in this top of an old tower,
Fig. 48., tiles and stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled;
but all would have been unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be
that iron ring on the inner wall, which by its vigorous black
_circular_ line precisely opposes all the square and angular characters
of the battlements and roof. Draw the tower without the ring, and see
what a difference it will make.

[Illustration: FIG. 48.]

One of the most important applications of the law of contrast is in
association with the law of continuity, causing an unexpected but gentle
break in a continuous series. This artifice is perpetual in music, and
perpetual also in good illumination; the way in which little surprises
of change are prepared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental
design, being one of the most subtle characteristics of the work of the
good periods. We take, for instance, a bar of ornament between two
written columns of an early 14th Century MS., and at the first glance we
suppose it to be quite monotonous all the way up, composed of a winding
tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud. Presently,
however, we see that, in order to observe the law of principality there
is one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly half-way up, which
forms a centre to the whole rod; and when we begin to examine the order
of the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let A stand for scarlet bud,
_b_ for blue leaf, _c_ for two blue leaves on one stalk, _s_ for