ways associating their colours in great
groups; binding their forms together by encompassing lines, and
securing, by various dexterities of expedient, what they themselves call
"breadth:" that is to say, a large gathering of each kind of thing into
one place; light being gathered to light, darkness to darkness, and
colour to colour. If, however, this be done by introducing false lights
or false colours, it is absurd and monstrous; the skill of a painter
consists in obtaining breadth by rational arrangement of his objects,
not by forced or wanton treatment of them. It is an easy matter to paint
one thing all white, and another all black or brown; but not an easy
matter to assemble all the circumstances which will naturally produce
white in one place, and brown in another. Generally speaking, however,
breadth will result in sufficient degree from fidelity of study: Nature
is always broad; and if you paint her colours in true relations, you
will paint them in majestic masses. If you find your work look broken
and scattered, it is, in all probability, not only ill composed, but
untrue.

The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scattering of light
and colour, has a certain contrasting charm, and is occasionally
introduced with exquisite effect by good composers.[261] Still, it is
never the mere scattering, but the order discernible through this
scattering, which is the real source of pleasure; not the mere
multitude, but the constellation of multitude. The broken lights in the
work of a good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not
unshepherded; speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a bad
painter fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving
it to be wished they were also of dissolution.

9. THE LAW OF HARMONY.

This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of composition as
of truth, but it must guide composition, and is properly, therefore, to
be stated in this place.

Good drawing is, as we have seen, an _abstract_ of natural facts; you
cannot represent all that you would, but must continually be falling
short, whether you will or no, of the force, or quantity, of Nature.
Now, suppose that your means and time do not admit of your giving the
depth of colour in the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it
paler. If you paint all the colours proportionately paler, as if an
equal quantity of tint had been washed away from each of them, you still
obtain a harmonio