time after his death, declares, "that he was absolutely startled by the
resemblance"--he yet exercised over the whole that creative, at least
compounding art, which arrayed the objects in the forms most harmonious to
the eye, and grouped the details into a whole, telling in the most
effective manner the story, or conveying the impression it was intended to
create. The composition of a picture, he used to say, "was like a sum in
arithmetic--take away, or add the smallest item, and the whole was certain
to be wrong."

As a consequence, we think, of this conviction, that nature is not to be
_literally imitated_ in her colours or forms, but that some compromise is
to be found, by which, though on a lower key, a similar impression is to
be made on the eye, and through that on the mind, is the general
abstinence from positive colour, which distinguishes Constable's
paintings. It was not that he adopted the conventional orange and brown of
the continental school, or shrank from endeavouring to carry the full
impression of the dewy verdure of English landscape. For these subterfuges
in art he had an abundant contempt. "Don't you find it very difficult to
determine," said Sir George Beaumont, (who, with all his fine feelings of
art, certainly looked at nature through a Claude Lorraine medium,) "where
to place _your brown tree_?" "Not in the least," was Constable's answer,
"for I never put such a thing into a picture." On another occasion, when
Sir George was recommending the colour of an old Cremona fiddle as a good
prevailing tone for every thing, Constable answered the observation by
depositing an old Cremona on the green lawn in front of the house at
Cole-Orton. But what we mean is this--that to produce the effect which
green or red produces in nature, it does not follow that green or red are
to be used in art, and that the impression of these colours will often be
better brought out by tints in which but a very small portion of either is
to be found.

Mr Leslie has remarked this peculiarity in several of Constable's
pictures. Speaking of Constable's _Boat-building_, he observes--"In the
midst of a meadow at Flatford, a barge is seen on the stocks, while, just
beyond it, the river Stour glitters in the still sunshine of a hot
summer's day. This picture is a proof, that in landscape, what painters
call warm colours are not necessary to produce a warm effect. It has,
indeed, no positive colour, and there is much of gray and g