the Florentine or the ardour of the Venetian; namely, that when retained or imitated from them by the landscape painters of the seventeenth century, when appearing in isolation from all other good, among the weaknesses and paltrinesses of Claude, the mannerisms of Gaspar, and the caricatures and brutalities of Salvator, it yet redeems and upholds all three, conquers all foulness by its purity, vindicates all folly by its dignity, and puts an uncomprehended power of permanent address to the human heart upon the lips of the senseless and the profane.'

Now although I doubt not that the general value of this treatment will be acknowledged by all lovers of art, it is not certain that the point to prove which I have brought it forward will be as readily conceded; namely, the inherent power of all representations of infinity over the human heart. For there are, indeed, countless associations of pure and religious kind, which combine with each other to enhance the impression when presented in this particular form, whose power I neither deny nor am careful to distinguish, seeing that they all tend to the same point, and have reference to heavenly hopes; delights they are in seeing the narrow, black, miserable earth fairly compared with the bright firmament; reachings forward unto the things that are before, and joyfulness in the apparent, though unreachable, nearness and promise of them. But there are other modes in which infinity may be represented, which are confused by no associations of the kind, and which would, as

1 In one of the smaller rooms of the Pitti Palace, over the door, is a Temptation of St. Anthony, by Salvator, wherein such power as the artist possessed is fully manifested, and less offensively than is usual in his sacred subjects. It is a vigorous and ghastly thought, in that kind of horror which is dependent on scenic effect perhaps unrivalled, and I shall have occasion to refer to it again in speaking of the powers of Imagination. I allude to it here, because the sky of the distance affords a remarkable instance of the power of light at present under discussion. It is formed of flakes of black cloud, with rents and openings of intense and lurid green, and at least half of the impressiveness of the picture depends on these openings. Close them, make the sky one mass of gloom, and the spectre will be awful no longer. It owes to the light of the distance both its size and its spirituality. The time would fail me, if I were to name the tenth part of the pictures which occur to me, whose vulgarity is redeemed by this circumstance alone and yet let not the artist trust to such morbid and conventional use of it as may be seen in the common blue and yellow effectism of the present day. Of the value of moderation and simplicity in the use of this, as of all other sources of pleasurable emotion, I shall presently have occasion to speak farther.

§ 13. Other modes in which

the power of

Infinity is felt.

§ 14. The beauty of Cur

vature.

§ 15. How constant in external nature.

being in mere matter, appear trivial and mean, but for their incalculable influence on the forms of all that we feel to be beautiful. The first of these is the curvature of lines and surfaces, wherein it at first appears futile to insist upon any resemblance or suggestion of infinity, since there is certainly, in our ordinary contemplation of it, no sensation of the kind. But I have repeated again and again that the ideas of beauty are instinctive, and that it is only upon consideration, and even then in doubtful and disputable way, that they appear in their typical character. Neither do I intend at all to insist upon the particular meaning which they appear to myself to bear, but merely on their actual and demonstrable agreeableness so that in the present case, while I assert positively, and have no fear of being able to prove, that a curve of any kind is more beautiful than a right line, I leave it to the reader to accept or not, as he pleases, that reason of its agreeableness which is the only one that I can at all trace; namely, that every curve divides itself infinitely by its changes of direction.

That all forms of acknowledged beauty are composed exclusively of curves will, I believe, be at once allowed; but that which there will be need more especially to prove is, the subtlety and constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever. I believe that, except in crystals, in certain mountain forms admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrast (as in the slope of debris), in rays of light, in the levels of calm water and alluvial land, and in some few organic developements, there are no lines nor surfaces of nature without curvature; though as we before saw in clouds, more especially in their under lines towards the horizon, and in vast and extended plains, right lines are often suggested which are not actual. Without these we could not be sensible of the value of the contrasting curves; and while, therefore, for the most part the eye is fed in natural forms with a grace of curvature which no hand nor instrument can follow, other means are provided to give beauty to those surfaces which are admitted for contrast, as in water by its reflection of the gradations which it possesses not itself. In freshly broken ground which Nature has not yet had time to model, in quarries and pits which are none of her cutting, in those convulsions and evidences of convulsion of whose influence on ideal landscape

I shall presently have occasion to speak, and generally in all ruin and disease, and interference of one order of being with another (as in the browsing line of park trees), the curves vanish, and violently opposed or broken and unmeaning lines take their place.

dation.

What curvature is to lines, gradation is to shades and colours. § 16. The beauty of graIt is their infinity, and divides them into an infinite number of degrees. Absolutely without gradation no natural surface can possibly be, except under circumstances of so rare conjunction as to amount to a lusus naturæ: for we have seen that few surfaces are without curvature, and every curved surface must be gradated by the nature of light; and for the gradation of the few plane surfaces that exist, means are provided in local colour, aerial perspective, reflected lights, &c., from which it is but barely conceivable that they should ever escape. For instances of the complete absence of gradation we must look to man's work, or to his disease and decrepitude. Compare the gradated colours of the rainbow with the stripes of a target, and the gradual deepening of the youthful blood in the cheek with an abrupt patch of rouge, or with the sharply drawn veins of old age.

found in nature.

Gradation is so inseparable a quality of all natural shade, that § 17. How the eye refuses in painting to understand a shadow which appears without it; while, on the other hand, nearly all the gradations of nature are so subtle, and between degrees of tint so slightly separated, that no human hand can in any wise equal, or do anything more than suggest the idea of them. In proportion to the space over which gradation extends, and to its invisible subtlety, is its grandeur and in proportion to its narrow limits and violent degrees, its vulgarity. In Correggio, it is morbid in spite of its refinement of execution, because the eye is drawn to it, and it is made the most observable character of the picture; whereas natural gradation is for ever escaping observation to that degree that the greater part of artists in working from nature see it not, but either lay down such continuous lines and colours as are both disagreeable and impossible; or, receiving the necessity of gradation as a principle instead of a fact, use it in violently exaggerated measure, and so lose both the dignity of their own work, and, by the constant dwelling of their eyes upon exaggerations, their sensibility to that

§ 18. How necessary in art.

§ 19. Infinity not rightly implied by vast

ness.

of the natural forms. So that we find the majority of painters divided between the two evil extremes of insufficiency and affectation; and only the greatest men capable of making gradation continuous and yet extended over enormous spaces and within degrees of narrow difference, as in the body of a strong light.

From the necessity of gradation results what is commonly given as a rule of art, though its authority as a rule obtains only from its being a fact of nature, that the extremes of high light and pure colour can exist only in points. The common rules respecting sixths and eighths, held concerning light and shade, are entirely absurd and conventional; according to the subject and the effect of light, the greater part of the picture will be, or ought to be, light or dark; but that principle which is not conventional is, that of all light, however high, there is some part that is higher than the rest; and that of all colour, however pure, there is some part that is purer than the rest; and that generally of all shade, however deep, there is some part deeper than the rest, though this last fact is frequently sacrificed in art, owing to the narrowness of its means. But on the right gradation of focusing of light and colour depends, in great measure, the value of both. Of this I have spoken sufficiently in pointing out the singular constancy of it in the works of Turner. (Part II. Sec. II. Chap. II. § 17.) And it is generally to be observed that even raw and valueless colour, if rightly and subtly gradated, will, in some measure, stand for light; and that the most transparent and perfect hue will be, in some measure, unsatisfactory if entirely unvaried. I believe the early skies of Raffaelle owe their luminousness more to their untraceable and subtle gradation than to inherent quality of hue.

Such are the expressions of infinity which we find in creation, of which the importance is to be estimated rather by their frequency than by their distinctness. Let, however, the reader bear constantly in mind that I insist not on his accepting any interpretation of mine, but only on his dwelling so long on those objects which he perceives to be beautiful, as to determine whether the qualities to which I trace their beauty be necessarily there or not. Farther expressions of infinity there are in the mystery of Nature, and, in some measure, in her vastness; but these are dependent on our own imperfections,

and therefore, though they produce sublimity, they are unconnected with beauty. For that which we foolishly call vastness is, rightly considered, not more wonderful, not more impressive, than that which we insolently call littleness: and the infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea.