velvety richness. They vary from a rose colour to a warm red; work admirably; and are in other respects, except the most essential-the want of durability—excellent pigments in water and oil: they have not, however, any permanence in tint with white lead, and in glazing are soon discoloured and destroyed by the action of light, but are little affected by impure air, and are in other respects like the lakes of cochineal; all the pigments prepared from which may be tested by their solubility in liquid ammonia, which purples lakes prepared from the woods, but does not dissolve their colours.

9. MADDER CARMINE, or Field's Carmine, is, as its name expresses, prepared from madder. It differs from the rose lakes of madder principally in texture, and in the greater richness, depth, and transparency of its colour, which is of various hues from rose colour to crimson. These in other respects resemble the rubric or madder lakes, and are the only durable carmines for painting either in water or oil; for both which their texture qualifies them without previous grinding or preparation.— See Madder Lake, VII. 1.

10. ROSE PINK is a coarse kind of lake, produced by dyeing chalk or whitening with decoction of Brazil wood, &c. It is a pigment much used by paper-stainers, and in the commonest distemper painting, &c., but is too perishable to merit the attention of the artist.

11. ROUGE. The rouge végétale of the French is a species of carmine, prepared from safflow or safflower, of exquisite beauty and great cost. Its principal uses consist in dyeing silks of rose colours, and in combining with levigated talc to form the paint of the toilette, or cosmetic colours employed by the fair, who would have

"Blooming youth and gay delight

Sit on their rosy cheeks confess'd."

This pigment is, however, of too fugitive a colour to merit the attention of the artist, notwithstanding its great beauty, richness of colour, transparency, and free-working,—qualities which occasion it to be too often employed in heightening the apparent excellence of lakes and carmines. Chinese rouge and pink saucers have much of these qualities, and appear to be prepared also from the carthamus or safflower.

VIII. RED ORPIMENT. See Orange Orpiment.

CHAPTER XI.

OF BLUE.

"Where'er we gaze,—around, above, below,

What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found!
Rock, river, forest, mountain, all abound,

And bluest skies that harmonize the whole."

Byron: Childe Harold.

The third and last of the primary, or simple colours, is blue, which bears the same relation to shade that yellow does to light; hence it is the most retiring and diffusive of all colours, except purple and black and all colours have the power of throwing it back in painting, in greater or less degree, in proportion to the intimacy of their relations to light; first white, then yellow, orange, red, &c.

Blue alone possesses entirely the quality technically called coldness in colouring, and it communicates this property variously to all other colours with which it happens to be compounded. It is most powerful in a strong light, and appears to become neutral and pale in a declining light, owing to its ruling affinity with black or shade, and its power of absorbing light: hence the eye of the artist is liable to be deceived when painting

with blue in too low a light, or toward the close of day, to the endangering of the warmth and harmony of his picture. Blue enters into combination with yellow in the composition of all greens, and with red in all purples; it characterizes the tertiary olive, and is also the prime colour, or archeus of the neutral black, &c., and also of the semineutral slate colour, &c. : hence blue is changed in hue less than any other colour by mixture with black, as it is also by distance. It enters also subordinately into all other tertiary and broken colours, and, as nearest in the scale to black, it breaks and contrasts powerfully and agreeably with white, as in watchet or pale blues, the sky, &c. It is less active than the other primaries in reflecting light, and therefore is sooner lost as a local colour by assimilation with distance. It is an antient doctrine that the azure of the sky is a compound of light and darkness, and some have argued hence that blue is not a primary colour, but a compound of black and white; but pure or neutral black and white compound in infinite shades, all of which are neutral also, or grey. It is true that a mixture of black and white is of a cool hue, because black is not a primary colour but a compound of the three primary colours in which blue predominates, and this predominance is rendered more sensible when black is diluted with white. As to the colour of the sky, in which light and shade are compounded, it is neutral also, and never blue

except by contrast: thus, the more the light of the sun partakes of the golden or orange hue, and the more parched and burnt the earth is, the bluer appears the sky, as in Italy, and all hot countries. In England, where the sun is cooler, and a perpetual verdure reigns, infusing blue latently into the landscape, the sky is warmer and nearer to neutrality, and partakes of a diversity of greys, beautifully melodizing with blue as their key, and harmonizing with the light and the landscape. Thus the colour of the sky is always a contrast to the direct and reflected light of the scene: if, therefore, this light were of a rose colour, the neutral of the sky would be converted into green; or if the light were purple, the sky would become yellow, and such would it be in all other cases, according to the laws of chromatic equivalence and contrast, as often appears in the openings of coloured clouds at the rising and setting of the

sun.

Blue is discordant in juxtaposition with green, and in a less degree so with purple, both which are cool colours, and therefore blue requires its contrast, orange, in equal proportion, either of surface or intensity, to compensate or resolve its dissonances and correct its coldness. Botanists remark that blue flowers are much more rare than those of the other primary colours and their compounds, and hence advise the florist to cultivate blue flowers more sedulously: but in this they are