I 
 
 
 E 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 IHK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Received L^/jfol^L , 188 . 
 
 Accessions No. 3 &^^& Shelf-No. 
 
THE TWO SHIELDS. 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing. Plate I. 
 
THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 & If amittav 
 
 ON THE ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES AND 
 PRACTICE OF 
 
 DRAWING AND PAINTING. 
 
 AS DETERMINED BY THE TUSCAN MASTERS. 
 
 ARRANGED FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN BUSKIN, LL.D., 
 
 HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHUECH, AND SLADB PBOFK8SOE OF PINK A.BT8 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 T^ILEY &c SONS, 
 15 ASTOR PLACE. 
 
 1888. 
 

 CONTENTS OF VOL. L 
 
 MMfll 
 PREFACE, V 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE, 1 
 
 CHAPTER I_ 
 
 THE THREE DIVISIONS OF THE ART OF PAINTING, 7 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 FIRST EXERCISE IN RIGHT LINES I THE QUARTERING 
 
 OF ST. GEORGE'S SHIELD, ..... 17 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES I THE CIRCLE, . 25 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF ELEMENTARY FORM, 38 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE, ... 52 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLOURS, ... 74 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF THE RELATION OF COLOUR TO OUTLINE, . . 93 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF MAP DRAWING, 112 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF LIGHT AND SHADE , 140 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE publication of this book has been delayed by 
 what seemed to me vexatious accident, or (on my own 
 part) unaccountable slowness in work : but the delay 
 thus enforced has enabled me to bring the whole into a 
 form which I do not think there will be any reason after- 
 wards to modify in any important particular, containing 
 a system of instruction in art generally applicable in the 
 education of gentlemen ; and securely elementary in that 
 of professional artists. It has been made as simple as I 
 can in expression, and is specially addressed, in the main 
 teaching of it, to young people (extending the range of 
 that term to include students in our universities) ; and ^t 
 will be so addressed to them, that if they have not the 
 advantage of being near a master, they may teach them- 
 selves, by careful reading, what ia essential to their 
 progress. But I have added always to such initial princi- 
 ples, those which it is desirable to state for the guidance 
 of advanced scholars, or the explanation of the practice 
 of exemplary masters. 
 
 The exercises given in this book, when their series is 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 completed, will form a code of practice which may advisa- 
 bly be rendered imperative on the youth of both sexes 
 who show disposition for drawing. In general, youths 
 and girls who do not wish to draw should not be com- 
 pelled to draw ; but when natural disposition exists, 
 strong enough to render wholesome discipline endurable 
 with patience, every well-trained youth and girl ought to 
 be taught the elements of drawing, as of music, early, 
 and accurately. 
 
 To teach them inaccurately is indeed, strictly speaking, 
 not to teach them at all ; or worse than that, to prevent 
 the possibility of their ever being taught. The ordinary 
 methods of water-color sketching, chalk drawing, an! 
 the like, now so widely taught by second-rate masters, 
 simply prevent the pupil from ever understanding the 
 qualities of great art, through the whole of his after-life. 
 
 It will be found also that the system of practice here 
 proposed differs in many points, and in some is directly 
 adverse, to that which has-been for some years instituted 
 in our public schools of art. It might be supposed that 
 this contrariety was capricious or presumptuous, unless 
 I gave my reasons for it, by specifying the errors of the 
 existing popular system. 
 
 The first error in that system is the forbidding accuracy 
 of measurement, and enforcing the practice of guessing at 
 the size of objects. Now it is indeed often well to outline 
 at first by the eye, and afterwards to correct the drawing by 
 measurement ; but under the present method, the student 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 finishes his inaccurate drawing to the end, and his mind 
 is thus, during the whole progress of bis work, accus- 
 tomed to falseness in every contour. Such a practice is 
 not to be characterized as merely harmful, it is ruinous. 
 No student who has sustained the injury of being thus 
 accustomed to false contours, can ever recover precision 
 of sight. Nor is this all : he cannot so much as attain 
 to the first conditions of art judgment. For a fine work 
 of art differs from a vulgar one by subtleties of line which 
 the most perfect measurement is not, alone, delicate 
 enough to detect; but to which precision of attempted 
 measurement directs the attention ; while the security of 
 boundaries, within which maximum error must be re- 
 strained, enables the hand gradually to approach the per- 
 fectness which instruments cannot. Gradually, the mind 
 then becomes conscious of the beauty which, even after 
 this honest effort, remains inimitable ; and the faculty of 
 discrimination increases alike through failure and success. 
 But when the true contours are voluntarily and habitu- 
 ally departed from, the essential qualities of every beauti- 
 ful form are necessarily lost, and the student remains 
 forever unaware of their existence. 
 
 The second error in the existing system is the enforce- 
 ment of the execution of finished drawings in light and 
 shade, before the student has acquired delicacy of sight 
 enough to observe their gradations. It requires the 
 most careful and patient teaching to develop this faculty; 
 and it can only be developed at all by rapid and various 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 practice from natural objects, during which the attention 
 of the student must be directed only to the facts of the 
 shadows themselves, and not at all arrested on methods 
 of producing them. He may even be allowed to produce 
 them as he likes, or as he can ; the thing required of him 
 being only that the shade be of the right darkness, of the 
 right shape, and in the right relation to other shades 
 round it; and not at all that it shall be prettily cross- 
 hatched, or deceptively transparent. But at present, the 
 only virtues required in shadow are that it shall be pretty 
 in texture and picturesquely effective; and it is not 
 thought of the smallest consequence that it should be in 
 the right place, or of the right depth. And the conse- 
 quence is that the student remains, when he becomes a 
 painter, a mere manufacturer of conventional shadows of 
 agreeable texture, and to the end of his life incapable of 
 perceiving the conditions of the simplest natural passage 
 of chiaroscuro. 
 
 The third error in the existing code, and in ultimately 
 destructive power, the worst, is the construction of en- 
 tirely symmetrical or balanced forms for exercises in 
 ornamental design ; whereas every beautiful form in this 
 world, is varied in the minutiae of the balanced sides. 
 Place the most beautiful of human forms in exact sym- 
 metry of position, and curl the hair into equal curls on 
 both sides, arid it will become ridiculous, or monstrous. 
 Nor can any law of beauty be nobly observed without 
 occasional wilfulness of violation. 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 The moral effect of these monstrous conditions of 
 ornament on the mind of the modern designer is very 
 singular. I have found, in past experience in the Work- 
 ing Men's College, and recently at Oxford, that the 
 English student must at present of necessity be inclined 
 to one of two opposite errors, equally fatal. Either he 
 will draw things mechanically and symmetrically alto- 
 gether, and represent the two sides of a leaf, or of a plant, 
 as if he had cut them in one profile out of a doubled piece 
 of paper ; or he will dash and scrabble for effect, without 
 obedience to law of any kind : and I find the greatest 
 difficulty, on the one hand, in making ornamental 
 draughtsmen draw a leaf of any shape which it could 
 possibly have lived in ; and, on the other, in making land- 
 scape draughtsmen draw a leaf of any shape at all. So 
 that the process by which great work is achieved, and by 
 which only it can be achieved, is in both directions an- 
 tagonistic to the present English mind. Real artists are 
 absolutely submissive to law, and absolutely at ease in 
 fancy ; while we are at once wilful and dull ; resolved to 
 have our own way, but when we have got it, we cannot 
 walk two yards without holding by a railing. 
 
 The tap-root of all this mischief is in the endeavor to 
 produce some ability in the student to make money by 
 designing for manufacture. No student who makes this 
 his primary object will ever be able to design at all : and 
 the very words " School of Design " involve the profound- 
 est of Art fallacies. Drawing may be taught by tutors : 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 but Design only by Heaven; and to every scholar who 
 thinks to sell his inspiration, Heaven refuses its help. 
 
 To what kind of scholar, and on what conditions, that 
 help has been given hitherto, and may yet be hoped for, 
 is written with unevadable clearness in the history of 
 the Arts of the Past. And this book is called " The Laws 
 of Fesole" because the entire system of possible Christian 
 Art is founded on the principles established by Giotto in 
 Florence, he receiving them from the Attic Greeks 
 through Cimabue, the last of their disciples, and engraft- 
 ing them on the existing art of the Etruscans, the race 
 from which both his master and he were descended. 
 
 In the centre of Florence, the last great work of native 
 Etruscan architecture, her Baptistery, and the most perfect 
 work of Christian architecture, her Campanile, stand 
 within a hundred paces of each other : and from the foot 
 of that Campanile, the last conditions of design which 
 preceded the close of Christian art are seen in the dome 
 of Brunelleschi. Under the term " laws of Fesole," there- 
 fore, may be most strictly and accurately arranged every 
 principle of art, practised at its purest source, from the 
 twelfth to the fifteenth century inclusive. And the pur- 
 pose of this book is to teach our English students of art 
 the elements of these Christian laws, as distinguished 
 from the Infidel laws of the spuriously classic school, 
 under which, of late, our students have been exclusively 
 trained. 
 
 Nevertheless, in this book the art of Giotto and An- 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 gelico is not taught because it is Christian, but because it 
 is absolutely true and good: neither is the Infidel art of 
 Palladio and Giulio Romano forbidden because it is 
 Pagan ; but because it is false and bad ; and has entirely 
 destroyed not only our English schools of art, but all 
 others in which it has ever been taught, or trusted in. 
 
 Whereas the methods of draughtsmanship established 
 by the Florentines, in true fulfilment of Etruscan and 
 Greek tradition, are insuperable in execution, and eternal 
 in principle ; and all that I shall have occasion here to add 
 to them will be only such methods of their application to 
 landscape as were not needed in the day of their first in- 
 vention ; and such explanation of their elementary prac- 
 tice as, in old time, was given orally by the master. 
 
 It will not be possible to give a sufficient number of 
 examples for advanced students (or on the scale necessary 
 for some purposes) within the compass of this hand-book ; 
 and I shall publish therefore together with it, as I can 
 prepare them, engravings or lithographs of the examples 
 in my Oxford schools, on folio sheets, sold separately. 
 But this hand-book will contain all that was permanently 
 valuable in my former Elements of Drawing, together 
 with such further guidance as my observance of the result 
 of those lessons has shown me to be necessary. The; 
 work will be completed in twelve numbers, each contain- 
 ing at least two engravings, the whole forming, when 
 completed, two volumes of the ordinary size of my pub- 
 lished works; the first, treating mostly of drawing, for 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 beginners; and the second, of color, for advanced pupils. 
 I hope also that I may prevail on the author of the excel- 
 lent little treatise on Mathematical Instruments (Weale's 
 
 * 
 
 Rudimentary Series, 'No. 82), to publish a lesson-book 
 with about one-fourth of the contents of that formidably 
 comprehensive volume, and in larger print, for the use of 
 students of art ; omitting therefrom the descriptions of 
 instruments useful only to engineers, and without forty- 
 eight pages of advertisements at the end of it. Which, 
 if I succeed in persuading him to do, I shall be able to 
 make permanent reference to his pages for elementary 
 lessons on construction. 
 
 Many other things I meant to say, and advise, in this 
 Preface ; but h'nd that were I to fulfil such intentions, my 
 Preface would become a separate book, and had better 
 therefore end itself forthwith, only desiring the reader to 
 observe, in sum, that the degree of success, and of 
 pleasure, which he will finally achieve, in these or any 
 other art exercises on a sound foundation, will virtually 
 depend on the degree in which he desires to understand 
 the merit of others, and to make his own talents perma- 
 nently useful. The folly of most amateur work is chiefly 
 in its selfishness, and self-contemplation ; it is far better 
 not to be able to draw at all, than to waste life in the ad- 
 miration of one's own littlenesses; or, worse, to with- 
 draw, by merely amusing dexterities, the attention of 
 other persons from noble art. It is impossible that the 
 performance of an amateur can ever be otherwise than 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 feeble in itself; and the virtue of it consists only in 
 having enabled the student, by the effect of its production, 
 to form true principles of judgment, and direct his limited 
 powers to useful purposes. 
 
 BRANTWOOD, 31st Jvly, 1877. 
 
THE LAWS OF F^SOLE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ALL GREAT AKT IS PRAISE. 
 
 1. THE art of man is the expression of liis rational and 
 disciplined delight in the forms and laws of the creation < 
 of which he forms a part. 
 
 2. In all first definitions of very great things, there 
 must be some obscurity and want of strictness ; the at- 
 tempt to make them too strict will only end in wider 
 obscurity. We may indeed express to our friend the 
 rational and disciplined pleasure we have in a landscape, 
 yet not be artists: but it is true, nevertheless, that all art 
 is the skilful expression of such pleasure; not always, it 
 may be, in a thing seen, but only in a law felt ; yet still, 
 examined accurately, always in the Creation, of which 
 the creature forms a part ; and not in itself merely. 
 Thus a lamb at play, rejoicing in its own life only, is not 
 an artist ; but the lamb's shepherd, carving the aieco of 
 timber which he lays for his door-lintel into beads, is ex- 
 pressing, however unconsciously, his pleasure in the laws 
 of time, measure, and order, by which the earth moves, 
 and the sun abides in heaven. 
 
2 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 3. So far as reason governs, or discipline restrains, the 
 art even of animals, it becomes hum an, in those vir- 
 tues ; but never, I believe, perfectly human, because it 
 never, so far as I have seen, expresses even an uncon- 
 scious delight in divine laws. A nightingale's song is 
 indeed exquisitely divided; but only, it seems to me, as 
 the ripples of a stream, by a law of which the waters and 
 the bird are alike unconscious. The bird is conscious 
 indeed of joy and love, which the waters are not; but 
 (thanks be to God) joy and love are not Arts ; nor are 
 they limited to Humanity. But the love-song becomes 
 Art, when, by reason and discipline, the singer has be- 
 come conscious of the ravishment in its divisions to the 
 lute. 
 
 4. Farther to complete the range of our definition, it is 
 to be remembered that we express our delight in a beau- 
 tiful or lovely thing no less by lament for its loss, than 
 gladness in its presence, much art is therefore tragic or 
 pensive ; but all true art is praise.* 
 
 5. There is no exception to this great law, for even 
 
 * As soon as the artist forgets his function of praise in that of imita- 
 tion, his art is lost. His business is to give, by any means, however 
 imperfect, the idea of a beautiful thing ; not, by any means, however 
 perfect, the realization of an ugly one. In the early and vigorous days 
 of Art, she endeavored to praise the saints, though she made but 
 awkward figures of them. Gradually becoming able to represent the 
 human body with accuracy, she pleased herself greatly at first in this 
 new power, and for about a century decorated all her buildings with 
 human bodies in different positions. But there was nothing to be 
 praised in persons who had no other virtue than that of possessing 
 bodies, and no other means of expression than unexpected manners of 
 crossing their legs. Surprises of this nature necessarily have their 
 limits, and the Arts founded on Anatomy expired when the changes of 
 posture were exhausted. 
 
I. ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE. 3 
 
 caricature is only artistic in conception of the beauty of 
 which it exaggerates the absence. Caricature by persons 
 who cannot conceive beauty, is monstrous in proportion 
 to that dulness ; and, even to the best artists, persever- 
 ance in the habit of it is fatal. 
 
 6. Fix, then, this in your mind as the guiding princi- 
 ple of all right practical labor, and source of all healthful 
 life energy, that your art is to be the praise of some- 
 thing that you love. It may be only the praise of a 
 shell or a stone ; it may be the praise of a hero ; it may 
 be the praise of God : your rank as a living creature is 
 determined by the height and breadth of your love ; but, 
 be you small or great, what healthy art is possible to you 
 must be the expression of your true delight in a real 
 thing, better than the art. You may think, perhaps, 
 that a bird's nest by William Hunt is better than a real 
 bird's nest. We indeed pay a large sum for the one, and 
 scarcely care to look for, or save, the other. But it would 
 be better for us that all the pictures in the world per- 
 ished, than that the birds should cease to build nests. 
 
 And it is precisely in its expression of this inferiority 
 that the drawing itself becomes valuable. It is because 
 a photograph cannot condemn itself, that it is worthless. 
 The glory of a great picture is in its shame ; and the 
 charm of it, in speaking the pleasure of a great heart, 
 that there is something better than picture. Also it 
 speaks with the voices of many : the efforts of thousands 
 dead, and their passions, are in the pictures of their chil- 
 dren to day. Not with the skill of an hour, nor of a life, 
 nor of a century, but with the help of numberless souls, a 
 beautiful thing must be done. And the obedience, and 
 the understanding, and the pure natural passion, and the 
 
4 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 perseverance, in secula seculorum, as they must be given 
 to produce a picture, so they must be recognized, that we 
 may perceive one. 
 
 7. This is the main lesson I have been teaching, so far 
 as I have been able, through my whole life : Only that 
 picture is noble, which is painted in love of the reality. 
 It is a law which embraces the highest scope of Art ; it 
 is one also which guides in security the iirst steps of it. 
 If you desire to draw, that you may represent some- 
 thing that yon care for, you will advance swiftly and safely. 
 If you desire to draw, that you may make a beautiful 
 drawing, you will never make one. 
 
 8. And this simplicity of purpose is farther useful in 
 closing all discussions of the respective grace or admira- 
 bleness of method. The best painting is that which 
 most completely represents what it undertakes to repre- 
 sent, as the best language is that which most clearly says 
 what it undertakes to say. 
 
 9. Given the materials, the limits of time, and the con- 
 ditions of place, there is only one proper method of 
 painting.* And since, if painting is to be entirely good, 
 the materials of it must be the best possible, and the con- 
 ditions of time and place entirely favorable, there is only 
 one manner of entirely good painting. The so-called 
 * styles' of artists are either adaptations to imperfections 
 of material, or indications of imperfection in their own 
 power, or the knowledge of their day. The great 
 
 * In sculpture, tlie materials are necessarily BO varied, and the cir< 
 cumstances of place so complex, that it would seem like an affected 
 stretching of principle to say there is only one proper method of sculp- 
 ture : yet this is also true, and any handling of marble differing from 
 that of Greek workmen is inferior by such difference 
 
I. ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE. 5 
 
 painters are like each other in their strength, and diverse 
 only in weakness. 
 
 10. The last aphorism is true even with respect to the 
 dispositions which induce the preference of particular 
 characters in the subject. Perfect art perceives and re- 
 flects the whole of nature : imperfect art is fastidious, 
 and impertinently prefers and rejects. The foible of 
 Correggio is grace, and of Mantegna, precision : Veron- 
 ese is narrow in his gayety, Tiiitoret in his gloom, and 
 Turner in his light. 
 
 11. But, if we ~know our weakness, it becomes our 
 strength ; and the joy of every painter, by which he is 
 made narrow, is also the gift by which lie is made de- 
 lightful, so long as he is modest in the thought of his dis- 
 tinction from others, and no less severe in the indulgence, 
 than careful in the cultivation, of his proper instincts. 
 Recognizing his place, as but one quaintly-veined pebble 
 in the various pavement, one richly-fused fragment, in 
 the vitrail of life, he will find, in his distinctness, his 
 glory and his use ; but destroys himself in demanding 
 that all men should stand within his compass, or see 
 through his color. 
 
 12. The differences in style instinctively caused by per- 
 sonal character are however of little practical moment, 
 compared to those which are rationally adopted, in adap- 
 tation to circumstance. 
 
 Of these variously conventional and inferior modes of 
 work, we will examine such as deserve note in their 
 proper place. But we must begin by learning the man- 
 ner of work which, from the elements of it to the end, is 
 completely right, and common to all the masters of con- 
 
6 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 gummate schools. In whom these two great conditions of 
 excellence are always discernible, that they conceive 
 more beautiful things than they can paint, and desire 
 only to be praised in so far as they can represent these, 
 for subjects of higher praising. 
 
CHAPTER H. 
 
 THE THREE DIVISIONS OF THE ART OF PAINTING. 
 
 1. IN order to produce a completely representative 
 picture of any object on a flat surface, we must outline it, 
 color it, and shade it. Accordingly, in order to become a 
 complete artist, you must learn these three following 
 modes of skill completely. First, how to outline spaces 
 with accurate and delicate lines. Secondly, how to till 
 the outlined spaces with accurate, and delicately laid, 
 color. Thirdly, how to gradate the colored spaces, so as 
 to express, accurately and delicately, relations of light 
 and shade. 
 
 2. By the word < accurate ' in these sentences, I mean 
 nearly the same thing as if I had written < true ;' but 
 yet I mean a little more than verbal truth : for in many 
 cases, it is possible to give the strictest truth in words 
 without any painful care ; but it is not possible to be true 
 in lines, without constant care or accuracy. We may 
 say, for instance, without laborious attention, that the 
 tower of Garisenda is a hundred and sixty feet high, and 
 
 f leans nine feet out of the perpendicular. But we could 
 not draw the line representing this relation of nine feet 
 horizontal to a hundred and sixty vertical, without ex- 
 treme care. 
 
 In other cases, even by the strictest attention, it is not 
 possible to give complete or strict truth in words. We 
 
8 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 could not, by any number of words, describe the color of 
 a riband so as to enable a mercer to match it without see- 
 ing it. But an l accurate ' colorist can convey the re- 
 quired intelligence at once, with a tint on paper. Neither 
 would it be possible, in language, to explain the difference 
 in gradations of shade which the eye perceives between a 
 beautifully rounded and dimpled chin, and a more or less 
 determinedly angular one. But on the artist's ' accuracy ' 
 in distinguishing and representing their relative depths, 
 not in one feature only, but in the harmony of all, depend 
 his powers of expressing the charm of beauty, or the 
 force of character ; and his means of enabling us to know 
 Joan of Arc from Fair Rosamond. 
 
 3. Of these three tasks, outline, color, and shade, out- 
 line, in perfection, is the most difficult ; but students 
 must begin with that task, and are masters when they 
 can see to the end of it, though they never reach it. 
 
 To color is easy if you can see color ; and impossible if 
 you cannot.* 
 
 To shade is very difficult ; and the perfections of light 
 and shadow have been rendered by few masters ; but in 
 the degree sufficient for good work, it is within the reach 
 of every student of fair capacity who takes pains. 
 
 5. The order in which students usually learn these 
 three processes of art is in the inverse ratio of their diffi- 
 culty. They begin with outline, proceed to shade, and 
 conclude in color. While, naturally, any clever house 
 decorator can color, and any patient Academy pupil 
 shade ; but Raphael at his full strength is plagued with 
 
 * A great many people do not know green from red ; and such kind 
 of persons are apt to feel it their duty to write scientific treatises on 
 color, edifying to the art-world. 
 
II. THE THREE DIVISIONS OF PAINTING. 9 
 
 his outline, and tries half a dozen backwards and forwards 
 before he pricks his chosen one down.* 
 
 Nevertheless, both the other exercises should be prac- 
 tised with this of outline, from the beginning. We must 
 outline the space which is to be filled with color, or ex- 
 plained by shade ; but we cannot handle the brush too 
 soon, nor too long continue the exercises of the lead f 
 point. Every system is imperfect which pays more than 
 a balanced and equitable attention to any one of the three 
 skills, for all are necessary in equal perfection to the com- 
 pleteness of power. There will indeed be found great 
 differences between the faculties of different pupils to ex- 
 press themselves by one or other of these methods ; and 
 the natural disposition to give character by delineation, 
 charm by color, or force by shade, may be discreetly en- 
 couraged by the master, after moderate skill has been 
 attained in the collateral exercises. But the first condi- 
 tion of steady progress for every pupil no matter what 
 their gifts, or genius is that they should be taught to 
 draw a calm and true outline, entirely decisive, and ad- 
 mitting no error avoidable by patience and attention. 
 
 7. We will begin therefore with the simplest conceiv- 
 able practice of this skill, taking for subject the two ele- 
 mentary forms which the shepherd of Fesole gives us 
 (Fig. 1), supporting the desk of the master of Geometry. 
 
 You will find the original bas-relief represented very 
 sufficiently in the nineteenth of the series of photograph- 
 from the Tower of Giotto, and may thus for yoursel 
 ascertain the accuracy of this outline, which otherwise 
 
 * Beautiful and true shade can be produced by a machine fitted to 
 the surface, but no machine can outline. 
 f See explanation of term, p. 26. 
 
10 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 you might suppose careless, in that the suggested square 
 is not a true one, having two acute and two obtuse angles ; 
 nor is it set upright, but with the angle on your right 
 hand higher than the opposite one, so as partly to comply 
 with the slope of the desk. But this is one of the first 
 signs that the sculpture is by a master's hand. And the 
 first thing a modern restorer would do, would be to u cor- 
 
 FIG. l. 
 
 rect the mistake," and give you, instead, the, to him, more 
 satisfactory arrangement. (Fig. 2.) 
 
 8. We must not, however, permit ourselves, in the be- 
 ginning of days, to draw inaccurate squares ; such liberty 
 is only the final reward of obedience, and the generous 
 breaking of law, only to be allowed to the loyal. 
 
 Take your compasses, therefore, and your ruler, and 
 smooth paper over which your pen will glide unchecked. 
 And take above all things store of patience ; and then, 
 but for what is to be done then, the directions had best be 
 
II. THE THREE DIVISIONS OF PAINTING. 11 
 
 reserved to a fresh chapter, which, as it will begin a group 
 of exercises of which you will not at once perceive the in- 
 
 FIG. 2. 
 
 tention, had better, I think, be preceded by this following 
 series of general aphorisms, which I wrote for a young 
 Italian painter, as containing what was likely to be most 
 useful to him in briefest form ; and which for the same 
 reason I here give, before entering on specific practice. 
 
 APHORISMS . 
 
 The greatest art represents every thing with absolute 
 sincerity, as far as it is able. But it chooses the best 
 things to represent, and it places them in the best order 
 in which they can be seen. You can only judge of what 
 is lest, in process of time, by the bettering of your own 
 character. What is true, you can learn now, if you will. 
 
12 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 II. 
 
 Make your studies always of the real size of things. A 
 man is to be drawn the size of a man, and a cherry the 
 size of a cherry. 
 
 ' But I cannot draw an elephant his real size ' ? 
 
 There is no occasion for you to draw an elephant. 
 
 ' But nobody can draw Mont Blanc his real size ' ? 
 
 No. Therefore nobody can draw Mont Blanc at all ; 
 but only a distant view of Mont Blanc. You may also 
 draw a distant view of a man, and of an elephant, if you 
 like; but you must take care that it is seen to be so, and 
 not mistaken for a drawing of a pigmy, or a mouse, near. 
 
 'But there is a great deal of good miniature painting'? 
 
 Yes, and a great deal of fine cameo-cutting. But I am 
 going to teach you to be a painter, not a locket-decorator, 
 or medallist. 
 
 m. 
 
 Direct all your first efforts to acquire the power of 
 drawing an absolutely accurate outline of any object, of 
 its real size, as it appears at a distance of not less tban 
 twelve "feet from the eye. All greatest art represents 
 objects at not less than this distance; because you cannot 
 see the full stature and action of a man if you go nearer 
 him. The difference between the appearance of any 
 thing say a bird, fruit, or leaf at a distance of twelve 
 feet or more, and its appearance looked at closely, is the 
 first difference also between Titian's painting of it, and a 
 
 Dutchman's. 
 
 
 
 rv. 
 
 Do not think, by learning the nature or structure of a 
 thing, that you can learn to draw it. Anatomy is neces- 
 
APHORISMS. 13 
 
 sary in the education of surgeons; botany in that of 
 apothecaries; and geology in that of miners. But none 
 of the three will enable you to draw a man, a flower, or a 
 mountain. You can learn to do that only by looking at 
 them ; not by cutting them to pieces. And don't think 
 you can paint a peach, because you know there's a stone 
 inside ; nor a face, because you know a skull is. 
 
 v. 
 
 Naxt to outlining things accurately, of their true form, 
 you must learn to color them delicately, of their true 
 color. 
 
 VI. 
 
 If you can match a color accurately, and lay it deli- 
 cately, you are a painter ; as, if you can strike a note 
 surely, and deliver it clearly, you are a singer. You may 
 then choose what you will paint, or what you will sing. 
 
 VII. 
 
 A pea is green, a cherry red, and a blackberry black, 
 all round. 
 
 vm. 
 
 Every light is a shade, compared to higher lights, till 
 you come to the sun ; and every shade is a light, compared 
 to deeper shades, till you come to the night. When, 
 therefore, you have outlined any space, you have no reason 
 tr> ask whether it is in light or shade, but only, of what 
 color it is, and to what depth of that color. 
 
 IX. 
 
 You will be told that shadow is gray. But Correggio, 
 when he has to shade with one color, takes red chalk. 
 
14: THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 X. 
 
 You will be told that bine is a retiring color, because 
 distant mountains are blue. The sun setting behind 
 them is nevertheless farther off, and you must paint it 
 with red or yellow. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " Please paint me my white cat," said little Imelda. 
 " Child," answered the Bolognese Professor, " in the 
 grand school, all cats are gray." 
 
 XII. 
 
 Fine weather is pleasant ; but if your picture is beau- 
 tiful, people will not ask whether the sun is out or in. 
 
 xm*. 
 
 When you speak to your friend in the street, you take 
 him into the shade. When you wish to think you can 
 speak to him in your picture, do the same. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Be economical in every thing, but especially in candles. 
 When it is time to light them, go to bed. But the worst 
 waste of them is drawing by them. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Never, if you can help it, miss seeing the sunset and 
 the dawn. And never, if you can help it, see any thing 
 but dreams between them. 
 
APHORISMS. 15 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ( A fine picture, you say '( ' " The finest possible ; St. 
 Jerome, and his lion, and his arm-chair. St. Jerome was 
 painted by a saint, and the Lion by a hunter, and the 
 chair by an upholsterer." 
 
 My compliments. It must be very fine; but I do not 
 care to see it. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 { Three pictures, you say ? and by Carpaccio ! ' " Yes 
 St. Jerome, and his lion, and his arm-chair. Which will 
 you see ?" ' What does it matter ? The one I can see 
 soonest.' 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Great painters defeat Death ; the vile, adorn him, and 
 adore. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 If the picture is beautiful, copy it as it is ; if ugly, let 
 it alone. Only Heaven, and Death, know what it was. 
 
 xx. 
 
 i The King has presented an Etruscan vase, the most 
 beautiful in the world, to the Museum of Naples. What 
 a pity I cannot draw it ! ' 
 
 In the meantime, the housemaid has broken a kitchen 
 tea-cup ; let me see if you can draw one of the pieces. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 When you would do your best, stop, the moment you 
 begin to feel difficulty. Your drawing will be the best 
 
16 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 you can do ; but you will not be able to do another so 
 good to-morrow. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 When you would do better than your best, put your 
 full strength out, the moment you feel a difficulty. You 
 will spoil your drawing to-day ; but you will do better 
 than your to-day's best, to-morrow. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " The enemy is too strong for me to-day," said the wise 
 young general. " I won't fight him ; but I won't lose 
 sight of him." 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " I can do what I like with my colors, now," said the 
 proud young scholar. " So could I, at your age," 
 answered the master; "but now, I can only do what 
 other people like." 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 FIRST EXERCISE IN RIGHT LINES, THE QUARTERING OF ST. 
 
 1. TAKE your compasses,* and measuring an inch on 
 your ivory rule, mark that dimension by the two dots at 
 B and C (see the uppermost figure on the left in Plate 
 1), and with your black ruler draw a straight line between 
 them, with a fine steel pen and common ink.f Then mea- 
 sure the same length, of an inch, down from B, as nearly 
 perpendicular as you can, and mark the point A ; and 
 divide the height A B into four equal parts with the com- 
 passes, and mark them with dots, drawing every dot as a 
 neatly circular point, clearly visible. This last finesse 
 will be an essential part of your drawing practice ; it is 
 very irksome to draw such dots patiently, and very diffi- 
 cult to draw them well. 
 
 Then mark, not now by measure, but by eye, the re- 
 maining corner of the square, D, and divide the opposite 
 side C D, by dots, opposite the others as nearly as you 
 
 * I have not been able yet to devise a quite simple and sufficient case 
 of drawing instruments for my schools. But, at all events, the com- 
 plete instrument-case must include the ivory scale, the black parallel 
 rule, a divided quadrant (which I will give a drawing of when it is 
 wanted), one pair of simple compasses, and one fitted with pen and 
 pencil. 
 
 \ Any dark color that will wash off their fingers may be prepared 
 for children. 
 
18 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 can guess. Then draw four level lines without a ruler, 
 and without raising your pen, or stopping, slowly, from 
 dot to dot, across the square. The four lines altogether 
 should not take less, but not much more, than a 
 quarter of a minute in the drawing, or about four seconds 
 each. Repeat this practice now and then, at leisure 
 minutes, until you have got an approximately well-drawn 
 group of five lines; the point D being successfully put 
 in accurate corner of the square. Then similarly divide 
 the lines A I) and B C, by the eye, into four parts, and 
 complete the figure as on the right hand at the top of 
 Plate 1, and test it by drawing diagonals across it through 
 the corners of the squares, till you can draw it true. 
 
 2. Contenting yourself for some time with this square 
 of sixteen quarters for hand practice, draw also, with ex- 
 tremest accuracy of measurement possible to you, and 
 finely ruled lines such as those in the plate, the inch 
 square, with its side sometimes divided into three parts, 
 sometimes into five, and sometimes into six, completing 
 the interior nine, twenty-five, and thirty-six squares with 
 utmost precision ; and do not be satisfied with these till 
 diagonals afterwards drawn, as in the figure, pass pre- 
 cisely through the angles of the square. 
 
 Then, as soon as you can attain moderate precision in 
 instrumental drawing, construct the central figure in the 
 plate, drawing, first the square ; then, the lines of the 
 horizontal bar, from the midmost division of the side 
 divided into five. Then draw the curves of the shield, 
 from the uppermost corners of the cross-bar, for cen- 
 tres ; then the vertical bar, also one-fifth of the square 
 in breadth; lastly, find the centre of the square, and 
 draw the enclosing circle, to test the precision of all. 
 
III. P'IRST EXERCISE IN RIGHT LINES. 19 
 
 More advanced pupils may draw the inner line to mark 
 thickness of shield; and lightly tint the cross with rose- 
 color. 
 
 In the lower part of the plate is a first study of a 
 feather, for exercise later on ; it is to be copied with a 
 fine steel pen and common ink, having been so drawn with 
 decisive and visible lines, to form steadiness of hand.* 
 
 3. The feather is one of the smallest from the upper 
 edge of a hen's wing; the pattern is obscure, and not 
 so well adapted for practice as others to be given sub- 
 sequently, but I like best to begin with this, under St. 
 George's shield ; and whether you can copy it or not, if 
 you have any natural feeling for beauty of line, you will 
 see, by comparing the two, that the shield form, mechani- 
 cally cons'ructed, is meagre and stiff; and also that it 
 would be totally impossible to draw the curves which 
 terminate the feather below by any m >chanical law ; much 
 less the various curves of its filaments. Nor can we draw 
 even so simple a form as that of a shield beautifully, by 
 instruments. But we may come nearer, by a more complex 
 construction, to beautiful form ; and define at the same 
 time the heraldic limits of the bearings. This finer 
 method is given in Plate 2, on a scale twice as large, the 
 shield being here two inches wide. And it is to be con- 
 structed as follows. 
 
 4. Draw the square A B C D, two inches on the side, 
 
 * The original drawings for all these plates will be put in the 
 Sheffield Museum ; but if health remains to me, I will prepare others 
 of the same kind, only of different subjects, for the other schools of St. 
 George. The engravings, by Mr. Allen's good skill, will, I doubt not, 
 be better than the originals for all practical purposes ; especially as my 
 hand now shakes more than his, in small work. 
 
20 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 with its diagonals A C, B D, and the vertical P Q through 
 its centre O ; and observe that, henceforward, I shall 
 always use the words ' vertical ' for ' perpendicular,' and 
 i level ' for * horizontal,' being shorter, and no less accurate. 
 
 Divide O Q, OP, each into three equal parts by the 
 points, K, a; N, d. 
 
 Through a and d draw the level lines, cutting the dia- 
 gonals in 5, c, e, and f\ and produce b c, cutting the sides 
 of the square in m and n, as far towards x and y as you 
 see will be necessaiy. 
 
 With centres m and n>, and the equal radii in a, n a, 
 describe semicircles, cutting x y in x and y. With centres 
 x and y, and the equal radii x n, y m, describe arcs m Y, 
 n Y, cutting each other and the line Q P, produced, in Y. 
 
 The precision of their concurrence will test your accu- 
 racy of construction. 
 
 5. The form of shield BOY, thus obtained, is not a 
 perfect one, because no perfect form (in the artist's sense 
 of the word i perf ectness ') can be drawn geometrically ; 
 but it approximately represents the central type of Eng- 
 lish shield. 
 
 It is necessary for you at once to learn the names of 
 the nine points thus obtained, called i honor-points,' by 
 which the arrangement and measures of bearings are 
 determined. 
 
 All shields are considered heraldically to be square in 
 the field, so that they can be divided accurately into quar- 
 ters. 
 
 I am not aware of any formerly recognized geometri- 
 cal method of placing the honor-points in this field : that 
 which I have here given will be found convenient for 
 strict measurement of the proportions of bearings. 
 
D 
 
 B 
 
 A 
 
 K 
 O 
 N 
 
 f 
 
 D 
 
 CONSTRUCTION FOR PLACING THE HONOR POINTS. 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing. Plate II. 
 
III. FIRST EXERCISE "IN RIGHT LINES. 21 
 
 6. Considering the square A B C D as the field, and 
 removing from it the lines of construction, the honor- 
 points are seen in their proper places, in the lower part 
 of the plate. 
 
 These are their names, 
 
 a Middle Chief 
 
 I Dexter Chief 
 
 c Sinister Chief 
 
 K. Honor 
 
 O Fesse [ point. 
 
 N Numbril 
 
 d Middle Base 
 
 e Dexter Base 
 
 f Sinister Base 
 
 I have placed these letters, with some trouble, as I 
 think best for help of your memory. 
 
 The (i-, 6, c ; d, e, f, are, I think, most conveniently 
 placed in upper and under series : I could not, therefore, 
 put f for the Fesse point, but the O will remind you of it 
 as the sign for a belt or girdle. Then K will stand for 
 knighthood, or the honor-point, and putting N for the 
 numbril, which is otherwise difficult to remember, we 
 have, reading down, the syllable KON, the Teutonic be- 
 ginning of KONIG or King, all which may be easily re- 
 membered. 
 
 And now look at the first plate of the large Oxford 
 series.* It is engraved from my free-hand drawing in 
 
 * See notice of tins series in Preface. 
 
22 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 the Oxford schools ; and is to be copied, as that drawing 
 is executed, with pencil and color. 
 
 In which sentence I find myself face to face with a 
 difficulty of expression which has long teased me, and 
 which I must now conclusively, with the readers good 
 help, overcome. 
 
 7. In all classical English writing on art, the word 
 'pencil,' in all classical French writing the word 'pinceau,' 
 and in all classical Italian writing the word 'pennello,' 
 means the painter's instrument, the brush.* 
 
 It is entirely desirable to return, in England, to this 
 classical use with constant accuracy, and resolutely to call 
 the black-lead pencil, the ' lead-crayon ;' or, for shortness, 
 simply ' the lead.' In this book I shall generally so call 
 it, saying, for instance, in the case of this diagram, " draw 
 it first with the lead." l Crayon,' from ' craie,' chalk, I 
 shall use instead of ' chalk ;' meaning when I say black 
 crayon, common black chalk ; and when I say white cra- 
 yon, common white chalk ; while I shall use indifferently 
 the word t pencil ' for the instrument whether of water- 
 color or oil painting. 
 
 8. Construct then the whole of this drawing, Plate 1, 
 Oxford series, first with a light lead line ; then take an 
 ordinaryf camel's-hair pencil, and with free hand follow 
 
 * The Latin 'penicillum' originally meant a 'little tail,' as of the 
 ermine. My friend Mr. Alfred Tylor informs me that Newton was 
 the first to apply the word to light, meaning a pointed group of rays. 
 
 f That is to say, not a particularly small one ; hut let it be of good 
 quality. Under the conditions of overflowing wealth which reward 
 our national manufacturing industry, I find a curious tendency in my 
 pupils to study economy especially in colors and brushes. Every 
 now and then 1 find a student using a brush which bends up when it 
 
III. FIRST EXERCISE IN RIGHT LINES. 23 
 
 the lead lines in color. Indian red is the color generally 
 to be used for practice, being cheap and sufficiently dark, 
 but lake or carmine work more pleasantly for a difficult 
 exercise like this. 
 
 9. In laying the color lines, you may go over and 
 over again, to join them and make them even, as often 
 as you like, but must not thicken the thin ones ; nor in- 
 terrupt the thickness of the stronger outline so as to con- 
 fuse them at all with each other. Giotto, Durer, or Man- 
 tegna, would draw them at once without pause or visible 
 error, as far as the color in the pencil lasted. Only two 
 or three years ago I could nearly have done so myself, 
 but my hand now shakes a little ; the drawing in the 
 Oxford schools is however very little retouched over the 
 first line. 
 
 10. We will at this point leave our heraldry,* because 
 
 touches the paper, and remains in the form of a fish-hook. If I advise 
 purchase of a better, he or she says to me, " Can't I do something 
 with this?" "Yes, something, certainly. Perhaps you may paste 
 with it ; but you can't draw. Suppose I was a fencing-master, and 
 you told me you couldn't afford to buy a foil, would you expect me 
 to teach you to fence with a poker?" 
 
 * Under the general influence of Mr. Gradgrind, there has been 
 lately published a book of " Heraldry founded on facts " (The Pur- 
 suivant of Arms, Chatto & Windus), which is worth buying, for 
 two reasons : the first, that its ' facts ' are entirely trustworthy and 
 useful (well illustrated in minor woodcut also, and, many, very curi- 
 ous and new) ; the second, that the writer's total ignorance of art, 
 and his education among vulgar modernisms, have caused him to give 
 figure illustrations, wherever he draws either man or beast, as at pages 
 62 and 106, whose horrible vulgarity will be of good future service as 
 a type to us of the maximum in that particular. But the curves of 
 shields are, throughout, admirably chosen and drawn, to the point 
 mechanically possible. 
 
24 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 we cannot better the form of our shield until we can draw 
 lines of more perfect, that is to say, more varied and 
 interesting, curvature, for its sides. And in order to do 
 this we must learn how to construct and draw curves 
 which cannot be drawn with any mathematical instru- 
 ment, and yet whose course is perfectly determined. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. THE CIRCLE. 
 
 1. AMONG the objects familiarly visible to us, and 
 usually regarded with sentiments of admiration, few are 
 more classically representative of Giotto's second figure, 
 inscribed in his square, than that by common consent 
 given by civilized nations to their pieces of money. We 
 may, I hope, under fortunate augury, limit ourselves at 
 first to the outline (as, in music, young students usually 
 begin with the song) of Sixpence. 
 
 2. Supposing you fortunate enough to possess the coin, 
 may I ask you to lay it before you on a stiff card. Do 
 you think it looks round ? It does not, unless you look 
 exactly down on it. But let us suppose you do so, and 
 have to draw its outline under that simple condition. 
 
 Take your pen, and do it then, beside the sixpence. 
 
 " You cannot ?" 
 
 Neither can I. Giotto could, and perhaps after work- 
 ing due time under the laws of Fsole, you may be able 
 to do it, too, approximately. If I were as young as you, 
 I should at least encourage that hope. In the meantime 
 you must do it ignominiously, with compasses. Take 
 your pen -compasses, and draw with them a circle the size 
 of a sixpence.* 
 
 * Not all young students can even manage their compasses ; and it 
 is well to get over this difficulty with deliberate and immediate effort. 
 
26 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 3. When it is done, yon will not, I hope, be satisfied 
 with it as the outline of a sixpence.* For, in the first 
 place, it might just as well stand for the outline of the 
 moon ; and in the second, though it is true, or accurate, in 
 the mere quality of being a circle, either the space en- 
 closed by the inner side of the black line must be smaller, 
 or that, enclosed by the outside larger, than the area of a 
 sixpence. So the closer you can screw the compass-point, 
 the better you will be pleased with your line : only it 
 must always happen even with the most delicate line, so 
 long as it has thickness at all, that its inner edge is too 
 small, or its outer too large. It is best, therefore, that the 
 
 Hold your compasses upright, and lightly, by the joint at the top ; fix 
 one point quite firm, and carry the other round it any quantity of times 
 without touching the paper, as if you were spinning a top without 
 quitting hold of it. The fingers have to shift as the compasses re- 
 volve ; and, when well practised, should do so without stopping, check- 
 ing, or accelerating the motion of the point. Practise for five 
 minutes at a time till you get skilful in this action, considering it 
 equally disgraceful that the fixed point of the compasses should slip, or 
 that it should bore a hole in the paper. After you are enough accus- 
 tomed to the simple mechanism of the revolution, depress the second 
 point, and draw any quantity of circles with it, large and small, till 
 you can draw them throughout, continuously, with perfect ease. 
 
 * If any student object to the continued contemplation of so vulgar 
 an object, I must pray him to observe that, vulgar as it may be, the 
 idea of it is contentedly allowed to mingle with our most romantic 
 ideals. I find this entry in my diary for 26th January, 1876 : "To 
 Crystal Palace, through squalor and rags of declining Dulwich : very 
 awful. In palace afterwards, with organ playing above its rows of 
 ghastly cream-colored amphitheatre seats, with ' SIXPENCE ' in letters 
 as large as the organist, occupying the full field of sight below him. Of 
 course, the names of Mendelssohn, Orpheus, Apollo, Julien, and other 
 great composers, were painted somewhere in the panelling above. 
 But the real inscription meant to be practically, and therefore divine- 
 ly, instructive was ' SIXPENCE.' 
 
IV. FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. 27 
 
 error should be divided between these two excesses, and 
 that the centre of the line should coincide with the con- 
 tour of the object. In advanced practice, however, out- 
 line is properly to be defined as the narrowest portion 
 which can be conveniently laid of a dark background 
 round an object which is to be relieved in light, or of a 
 light background round an object to be relieved in shade. 
 The Venetians often leave their first bright outlines 
 gleaming round their dark figures, after the rest of the 
 background has been added. 
 
 4. The perfect virtue of an outline, therefore, is to be 
 absolutely accurate with its inner edge, the outer edge 
 being of no consequence. Thus the figures relieved in 
 light on black Greek vases are first enclosed with a line 
 of thick black paint about the eighth of an inch broad, 
 afterwards melted into the added background. 
 
 In dark outline on white ground, however, it is often 
 necessary to draw the extremities of delicate forms with 
 lines which give the limit with their outer instead of their 
 inner edge ; else the features would become too large. 
 Beautiful examples of this kind of work are to be seen in 
 face-drawing, especially of children, by Leech, aifid Du 
 Maurier, in 'Punch.' 
 
 Loose lines, doubled or trebled, are sometimes found in 
 work by great, never by the greatest, masters ; but these 
 are only tentative; processes of experiment as to the 
 direction in which the real outline is to be finally laid. 
 
 5. The fineness of an outline is of course to be esti- 
 mated in relation to the size of the object it defines. A 
 chalk sketch on a wall may be a very subtle outline of a 
 large picture ; though Holbein or Bewick would be able 
 to draw a complete figure within the width of one of its 
 
28 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 lines. And, for your own practice, the simplest instru- 
 ment is the best ; and the line drawn by any moderately 
 well-cut quill pen, not crow quill, but sacred goose, is the 
 means of all art which you have first to master ; and you 
 may be sure that, in the end, your progress in all the 
 highest skill of art will be swift in proportion to the pa- 
 tience with which in the outset you persist in exercises 
 which will finally enable you to draw with ease the out- 
 line of any object of a moderate size (plainly visible, be 
 it understood, and firmly terminated),* with an unerring 
 and continuous pen line. 
 
 6. And observe, once for all, there is never to be any 
 scrawling, blotting, or splashing, in your work, with pen 
 or any thing else. But especially with the pen, you are 
 to avoid rapid motion, because you will be easily tempted 
 to it. Remember, therefore, that no line is well drawn 
 unless you can stop your hand at any point of it you 
 choose. On the other hand, the motion must be con- 
 sistent and continuous, otherwise the line will not be 
 even. 
 
 7. It is not indeed possible to say with precision how 
 fast the point may move, while yet the eye and fingers 
 retain perfect attention and directing power over it. I 
 have seen a great master's hand flying over the paper as 
 fast as gnats over a pool ; and the ink left by the light 
 grazing of it, so pale, that it gathered into shade like gray 
 lead ; and yet the contours, and fine notes of character 
 seized with the accuracy of Holbein. But gift of th 
 kind is a sign of the rarest artistic faculty and tact : ye . 
 
 * By 'firmly terminated,' I mean having an outline winch can be 
 drawn, as that of your sixpence, or a book, or a table. You can't out- 
 line a bit of cotton wool, or the flame of a candle. 
 
IV. FIRST EXERCISE IN 
 
 need not attempt to gain it, for if it is in you, and you 
 work continually, the power will come of itself ; and if it 
 is not in you, will never come ; nor, even if you could 
 win it, is the attainment wholly desirable. Drawings thus 
 executed are always imperfect, however beautiful : they 
 are out of harmony with the general manner and scheme 
 of serviceable art ; and always, so far as I have observed, 
 the sign of some deficiency of earnestness in the worker. 
 Whatever your faculty may be, deliberate exercise will 
 strengthen and confirm the good of it ; while, even if 
 your natural gift for drawing be small, such exercise will 
 at least enable you to understand and admire, both in 
 art and nature, much that was before totally profitless 
 or sealed to you. 
 
 8. We return, then, to our coin study. Now, if we are 
 ever to draw a sixpence in a real picture, we need not 
 think that it can always be done by looking down at it 
 like a hawk, or a miser, about to pounce. We must be 
 able to draw it lying anywhere, and seen from any dis- 
 tance. 
 
 So now raise the card, with the coin on it, slowly to 
 the level of the eye, so as at last to look straight over its 
 surface. As you do so, gradually the circular outline of 
 it becomes compressed ; and between the position in 
 which you look down on it, seeing its outline as a circle, 
 and the position in which you look across it, seeing noth- 
 ing but its edge, there are thus developed an infinite 
 series of intermediate outlines, which, as they approach 
 the circle, resemble that of an egg, and as they approach 
 the straight line, that of a rolling-pin; but which are 
 all accurately drawn curves, called by mathematicians 
 1 ellipses,' or curves that ' leave out ' something ; in this 
 
30 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 first practice you see they leave out some space of the 
 circle they are derived from. 
 
 9. Now, as you can draw the circle with compasses, so 
 you can draw any ellipse with a bit of thread and two 
 pins.* But as you cannot stick your picture over with 
 pins, nor find out, for any given ellipse, without a long 
 mathematical operation, where the pins should go, or 
 how long the thread should be, there is now no escape 
 for you from the necessity of drawing the flattened shape 
 of the sixpence with free hand. 
 
 10. And, therefore, that we may have a little more 
 freedom for it, we will take a larger, more generally at- 
 tainable, and more reverendly classic coin ; namely, the 
 ' Soldo/ or solid thing, from whose Italian name, heroes 
 who fight for pay were first called Soldiers, or, in 
 English, Pennyworth-men. Curiously, on taking one by 
 chance out of my pocket, it proves to be a Double 
 Obohis (Charon's fare ! and back again, let us hope), or 
 Ten Mites, of which two make a Five-thing. Inscribed 
 to that effect on one side 
 
 AKIEOAON 
 
 IO 
 AEIITA 
 
 while the other bears an eftigy not quite so curly in the 
 hair as an ancient Herakles, written around thus, 
 
 rEnpriO2 A 
 
 BASIAET2 TD.N EAAHNflN 
 I lay this on a sheet of white paper on the table ; and, 
 
 * No method of drawing it by points will give a finely continuous 
 line, until the hand is free in passing through the points. 
 
IV. FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. 31 
 
 the image and superscription being, for our perspective 
 purposes, just now indifferent, I will suppose you have 
 similarly placed a penny before you for contemplation. 
 
 11. Take next a sheet of moderately thick note-paper, 
 and folding down a piece of it sharply, cut out of the 
 folded edge a small flat arch, which, when you open the 
 sheet, will give you an oval aperture, somewhat smaller 
 than the penny. 
 
 Holding the paper with this opening in it upright, 
 adjust the opening to some given point of sight, so that 
 you see the penny exactly through it. You can trim the 
 cut edge till it fits exactly, and you will then see the 
 penny apparently painted on the paper between you and 
 it, on a smaller scale. 
 
 If you make the opening no larger than a grain of oats, 
 and hold the paper near you, and the penny two or three 
 feet back, you will get a charming little image of it, very 
 pretty and quaint to behold ; and by cutting apertures of 
 different sizes, you will convince yourself that you don't 
 see the penny of any given size, but that you judge of its 
 actual size by guessing at its distance, the real image on 
 the retina of the eye being far smaller than the smallest 
 hole you can cut in the paper 
 
 12. Now if, supposing you already have some skill in 
 painting, you try to produce an image of the penny which 
 shall look exactly like it, seen through any of these open- 
 ings, beside the opening, you will soon feel how absurd 
 it is to make the opening small, since it is impossible to 
 draw with fineness enough quite to imitate the image 
 seen through any of these diminished apertures. But if 
 you cut the opening only a hair's-breadth less wide than 
 the coin, you may arrange the paper close to it by put- 
 
32 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 ting the card and penny on the edge of a hook, and then 
 paint the simple image of what you see (penny only, 
 mind, not the cast shadow of it), so that you can't tell the 
 one from the other ; and that will be right, if your only 
 ohject is to paint the penny. It will be right also for a 
 flower, or a fruit, or a feather, or aught else which you 
 are observing simply for its own sake. 
 
 13. But it will be natural-history painting, not great 
 painter's painting. A great painter cares only to paint 
 his penny while the steward gives it to the laborer, or his 
 twopence while the Good Samaritan gives it to the host. 
 And then it must be so painted as you would see it at 
 the distance where you can also see the Samaritan. 
 
 14. Perfectly, however, at that distance. Not sketched 
 or slurred, in order to bring out the solid Samaritan in 
 relief from the aerial twopence. 
 
 And by being ' perfectly ' painted at that distance, I 
 mean, as it would be seen by the human eye in the per- 
 fect power of youth. That forever indescribable instru- 
 ment, aidless, is the proper means of sight, and test of all 
 laws of work which bear upon aspect of things for human 
 beings. 
 
 15. Having got thus much of general principle defined, 
 we return to our own immediate business, now simplified 
 by having ascertained that our elliptic outline is to be of 
 the width of the penny proper, within ahair's-breadth, so 
 that, practically, we may take accurate measure of the 
 diameter, and on that diameter practise drawing ellipses 
 of different degrees of fatness. If you have a master to 
 help you, and see that they are will drawn, I need not 
 give you farther direction at this stage ; but if not, and 
 we are to go on by ourselves, we must have some more 
 
IV. FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. 33 
 
 compass work ; which reserving for next chapter, I will 
 conclude this one with a few words to more advanced stu- 
 dents on the use of outline in study from nature. 
 
 16. I. Lead, or silver point, outline. 
 
 It is the only one capable of perfection, and the best of 
 all means for gaining intellectual knowledge of form. 
 Of the degrees in which shade may be wisely united with 
 it, the drawings of the figure in the early Florentine 
 schools give every possible example : but the severe 
 method of engraved outline used on Etruscan metal-work 
 is the standard appointed by the laws of Fesole. The 
 finest application of such method may be seen in the 
 Florentine engravings, of which more or less perfect fac- 
 similes are given in my ' Ariadne Florentina.' Raphael's 
 silver point outline, for the figure, and Turner's lead out- 
 line in landscape, are beyond all rivalry in abstract of 
 graceful and essential fact. Of Turner's lead outlines, 
 examples enough exist in the National Gallery to supply 
 all the schools in England, when they are prouerly 
 distributed.* 
 
 17. II. Pen, or woodcut, outline. The best means of 
 primal study of composition, and for giving vigorous 
 impression to simple spectators. The woodcuts of almost 
 any Italian books towards 1500, most of Durer's (a), all 
 Holbein's ; but especially those of the ; Dance of Death' 
 
 * My kind friend Mr. Burton is now so fast bringing all things under 
 his control into good working order at the ^National Gallery, that I 
 have good hope, by the help of his influence with the Trustees, such 
 distribution may be soon effected. 
 
 (a) I have put the complete series of the life of the Virgin in the St. 
 George's Museum. Sheffield. 
 
34 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 (5), and the etchings by Turner himself in the k Liber 
 Studiorum,' are standards of it (<?). With a light wash 
 of thin color above, it is the noblest method of intellectual 
 study of composition ; so employed by all the great Flor- 
 entine draughtsmen, and by Mantegna (d). Holbein and 
 Turner carry the method forward into full chiaroscuro ; 
 so also Sir Joshua in his first sketches of pictures (e). 
 
 18. III. Outline with the pencil. Much as I have 
 worked on illuminated manuscripts, I have never yet been 
 able to distinguish, clearly, pencilled outlines from the 
 penned rubrics. But I shall gradually give large exam- 
 ples from thirteenth century work which will be for 
 beginners to copy with the pen, and for advanced pupils 
 to follow with the pencil. 
 
 19. The following notes, from the close of one of my 
 Oxford lectures on landscape, contain the greater part of 
 what it is necessary farther to say to advanced students* 
 on this subject 
 
 * I find this book terribly difficult to arrange ; for if I did it quite 
 rightly, I should make the exercises and instructions progressive and 
 consecutive ; but then, nobody would see the reason for them till we 
 came to the end ; and I am so encumbered with other work that I think 
 it best now to get this done in the way likeliest to make each part 
 immediately useful. Otherwise, this chapter should have been all 
 about right lines only, and then we should have had one on the arrange- 
 ment of right lines, followed by curves, and arrangement of curves. 
 
 (&) First edition, also in Sheffield Museum. 
 
 (c) ' JEsacus and Hesperie,' and 'The Falls of the Reuss,' in Sheffield 
 Museum. 
 
 (d) 'The Triumph of Joseph.' Florentine drawing in Sheffield 
 Museum. 
 
 (e) Two, in Sheffield Museum. 
 
IV. FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. 35 
 
 When forms, as of trees or mountain edges, are so 
 complex that you cannot follow them in detail, you are 
 to enclose them with a careful outside limit, taking in 
 their main masses. Suppose you have a map to draw on 
 a small scale, the kind of outline which a good geographi- 
 cal draughtsman gives to the generalized capes and bays 
 of a country, is that by which you are to define too 
 complex masses in landscapes. 
 
 An outline thus perfectly made, with absolute decision, 
 and with a wash of one color above it, is the most mas- 
 terly of all methods of light and shade study, with limited 
 time, when the forms of the objects to be drawn are clear 
 and unaffected by mist. 
 
 But without any wash of color, such an outline is the 
 most valuable of all means of obtaining such memoranda 
 of any scene as may explain to another person, or record 
 for yourself, what is most important in its features ; only 
 when it is thus used, some modification is admitted in its 
 treatment, and always some slight addition of shade 
 becomes necessary in order that the outline may contain 
 the utmost information possible. Into this question of 
 added shade I shall proceed hereafter. 
 
 20. For the sum of present conclusions : observe that 
 in all drawings in which flat washes of color are associated 
 with outline, the first great point is entirely to suppress 
 the influences of impatience and affectation, so that if you 
 fail, you may know exactly in what the failure consists. 
 Be sure that you spread your color as steadily as if you 
 were painting a house wall, filling in every spot of white 
 to the extremest corner, and removing every grain of 
 superfluous color in nooks and along edge^. Then when 
 the tint is dry, you will be able to say that it is either too 
 
36 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 warm or cold, paler or darker than you meant it to be. 
 It cannot possibly come quite right till you have long 
 experience; only, let there be no doubt in your mind as 
 to the point in which it is wrong; and next time you 
 will do better. 
 
 21. I cannot too strongly, or too often, warn you 
 against the perils of affectation. Sometimes color light- 
 ly broken, or boldly dashed, will produce a far better 
 instant effect than a quietly laid tint ; and it looks so 
 dexterous, or so powerful, or so fortunate, that you are 
 sure to find everybody liking your work better for its in- 
 solence. But never allow yourself in such things. Effaco 
 at once a happy accident let nothing divert you from 
 the purpose you began with nothing divert or confuse 
 you in the course of its attainment ; let the utmost strengtli 
 of your work be in its continence, and the crowning 
 grace of it in serenity. 
 
 And even when you know that time will not permit 
 you to finish, do a little piece of your drawing rightly, 
 rather than the whole falsely : and let the non-completion 
 consist either in that part of the paper is left white, or 
 that only a foundation has been laid up to a certain 
 point, and the second colors have wot gone on. Let 
 your work be a good outline or part of one; a good 
 first tint or part of one ; but not, in any sense, a sketch ; 
 in no point, or measure, fluttered, neglected, or experi- 
 mental. In this manner you will never be in a state of 
 weak exultation at an undeserved triumph ; neither will 
 you be mortified by an inexplicable failure. From the 
 beginning you will know that more than moderate success 
 is impossible, and that when you fall short of that due 
 degree, the reason may be asceitained, and a lesson learned. 
 
IV. FIRST EXERCISE IN CURVES. 37 
 
 As far as my own experience reaches, the greater part of 
 the fatigue of drawing consists in doubt or disappoint- 
 ment, not in actual effort or reasonable application of 
 thought ; and the best counsels I have to give you may 
 be summed in these to be constant to your first purpose, 
 content with the skill you are sure of commanding, and 
 desirous only of the praises which belong to patience and 
 discretion. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 
 
 1. IN the 15th paragraph of the preceding chapter, 
 we were obliged to leave the drawing of our ellipse till 
 we had done some more compass work. For, indeed, all 
 curves of subtle nature must be at first drawn through 
 such a series of points as may accurately define them ; 
 and afterwards without points, by the free hand. 
 
 And it is better in first practice to make these points 
 for definition very distinct and large; and even some- 
 times to consider them rather as beads strung upon the 
 line, as if it were a thread, than as mere points through 
 which it passes. 
 
 2. It is wise to do this, not only in order that the points 
 themselves may be easily and unmistakably set, but because 
 all beautiful lines are beautiful, or delightful to sight, in 
 showing the directions in which material things may be 
 wisely arranged, or may servicedbly move. Thus, in 
 Plate 1, the curve which terminates the hen's feather 
 pleases me, and ought to please you, better than the 
 point of the shield, partly because it expresses such rela- 
 tion between the lengths of the filaments of the plume as 
 may fit the feather to act best upon the air, for flight ; or, 
 in unison with other such softly inlaid armor, for cover- 
 ing. 
 
 3. The first order of arrangement in substance is that 
 
A 
 
 B 
 
 Dra-<m by J Riiskm. tvgraved by G Allen 
 
 SCHOOLS OF ST QEOR.OK. 
 
 Elementary Drawing, Plate 111. 
 PRIMAL GROUPS OF THE CIRCLE. 
 
V. OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 39 
 
 of coherence into a globe ; as in a drop of water, in rain, 
 and dew, or, hollow, in a bubble: and this same kind of 
 coherence takes "place gradually in solid matter, forming 
 spherical knots, or crystallizations. Whether in dew, foam, 
 or any other minutely beaded structure, the simple form 
 is always pleasant to the human mind; and the ' pearl ' 
 to which the most precious object of human pursuit is 
 likened by its wisest guide derives its delightfulness 
 merely from its being of this perfect form, constructed of 
 a substance of lovely color. 
 
 4r. Then the second orders of arrangement are those in 
 which several beads or globes are associated in groups 
 under definite laws, of which of course the simplest is 
 that they should set themselves together as close as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 Take, therefore, eight marbles or be.ids* about three 
 quarters of an inch in diameter ; and place successively 
 two, three, four, etc., as near as they will go. You can 
 but let the first two touch, but the three will form a tri- 
 angular group, the four a square one, and so on, up to the 
 octagon. These are the first general types of all crystalline 
 or inorganic grouping : you must know their properties 
 well ; and therefore you must draw them neatly. 
 
 5. Draw first the line an inch long, which you have 
 already practised, and set upon it five dots, two large and 
 three small, dividing it into quarter inches, A. B, Plate 
 3. Then from the large dots as centres, through tlu 
 small ones, draw the two circles touching each other, as 
 at C. 
 
 *In St. George's schools, they are to be of pale rose-colored or 
 amber-colored quartz, with the prettiest veins I can find it bearing : 
 there are any quantity of tons of rich stone ready for us, waste on our 
 beaches. 
 
40 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 The triangle, equal-sided, each side half an inch, and 
 the square, in the same dimensions, with their dots, and 
 their groups of circles, are given in succession in the 
 plate ; and you will proceed to draw the pentagon, hexa- 
 gon, heptagon, and octagon group, in the same manner, 
 all of them half an inch in the side. All to be done with 
 the lead, free hand, corrected by test of compasses till 
 you get them moderately right, and finally drawn over 
 the lead with common steel pen and ink. 
 
 The degree of patience with which you repeat, to per- 
 fection, this very tedious exercise, will be a wholesome 
 measure of your resolution and general moral temper, and 
 the exercise itself a discipline at once of temper and hand. 
 On the other hand, to do it hurriedly or inattentively is 
 of no use whatever, either to mind or hand. 
 
 6. While you are persevering in this exercise, you must 
 also construct the same figures with your instruments, as 
 ; delicately as you can ; but complete them, as in Plate 4, 
 by drawing semicircles on the sides of each rectilinear 
 figure ; and, with the same radius, the portions of circles 
 which will include the angles of the same figures, placed 
 in a parallel series, enclosing each figure finally in a circle. 
 
 7. You have thus the first two leading groups of what 
 architects call Foils ; i.e., trefoils, quatrefoils, cinquefoils, 
 etc., their French names indicating the original domin- 
 ance of French design in their architectural use. 
 
 The entire figures may be best called ' Roses, 5 the 
 word rose, or rose window, being applied by the French 
 to the richest groups of them. And yon are to call the 
 point which is the centre of each entire figure the ' Rose 
 centre. 5 The arcs, you are to call < foils;' the centre.- 
 of the arcs, 'foil-centres ;' and the small points where 
 the arcs meet, ' cusps,' from cuspis, Latin for a point. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ST GBOROE. 
 
 Elementary Drawing, Plate IV. 
 PRIMAL GROUPS OF FOILS WITH ARC-CENTRES. 
 
4:2 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 a sheet of paper in this arrangement {Fig. 3), as evenly 
 square as you can. 
 
 Now, lift one up out of its place, thus (Fig. 4), but still 
 keeping it in contact with its next neighbor. * 
 
 You don't like that arrangement so well, do you ? 
 You ought not to like it so well. It is suggestive of one 
 of the sixpences having got " liberty and independence." 
 It is a form of dissolution. 
 
 FIG. 4. 
 
 Next push up one of the coins below, so as to touch the 
 one already raised, as in Figure 5. 
 
 You dislike this group even more than the last, I 
 should think. Two of the sixpences have got liberty 
 and independence now ! Two, if referred to the first 
 quatrefoil ; or, if the three upper ones are considered as a 
 staggering trefoil, three. 
 
 * If you have the book, compare the exercises in ' Ethics of the 
 Dust, ' page 67. 
 
V. OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 43 
 
 Push the lower one up to join them, then ; Figure 6. 
 
 FIG. 5. 
 
 That is a little more comfortable, but the whole figure 
 seems squinting or tumbling. You can't let it stay so ! 
 
 FIG. 6. 
 Put it upright, then ; Figure 7. 
 
44 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 And now you like it as well as the original group, or, it 
 may be, even better. You ought to like it better, for it 
 is not only as completely under law as the original group, 
 but it is under two laws instead of one, variously deter- 
 mining its height and width. The more laws any thing, 
 or any creature, interprets, and obeys, the more beautiful 
 it is (caeteris paribus). 
 
 10. You find then, for first conclusion, that you natu- 
 rally like things to be under law ; and, secondly, that 
 
 FIG. 7. 
 
 your feeling of the pleasantness in a group of separate, 
 (and not living,) objects, like this, involves some refer- 
 ence to the great law of gravity, which makes you feel it 
 desirable that things should stand upright, unless they 
 have clearly some reason for stooping. 
 
 It will, however, I should think, be nearly indifferent 
 to you whether you look at Figure 7 as I have placed it, 
 or from the side of the page. Whether it is broad, or 
 
V. OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 45 
 
 high will not matter, so long as it is balanced. But you 
 see the charm of it is increased, in either case, by mequal- 
 ity of dimension, in one direction or another ; by the intro- 
 duction, that is to say, of another law, modifying the first. 
 11. Next, let us take five sixpences, which we see will 
 at once fall into the pleasant equal arrangement, Figure 
 5, Plate iii. ; but we will now break up that, by putting 
 four together, as in our first quatre-foil here ; and the 
 fifth on the top, (Figure 8). 
 
 FIG. 8. 
 
 But you feel this new arrangement awkward. The up- 
 permost circle has no intelligible connection with the 
 group below, which, as a foundation, would be needlessly 
 large for it. If you turn the figure upside-down, how- 
 ever, I think you will like it better ; for the lowest circle 
 now seems a little related to the others, like a pendant. 
 But the form is still unsatisfactory. 
 
46 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 Take the group in Figure 7, above, then, and add the 
 fifth sixpence to the top of that (Fig. 9). 
 
 Are you not better pleased ? There seems now a unity 
 of vertical position in three circles, and of level position 
 in two : and you get also some suggestion of a pendant, 
 or if you turn the page upside-down, of a statant,* cross. 
 
 FIG. 9. 
 
 If, however, you now raise the two level circles, and 
 the lowest, so as to get the arrangement in Figure 10, the 
 
 * Clearly, this Latin derivative is needed in English, besides our 
 own ' standing ;' to distinguish, on occasion, a permanently fixed 
 ' state ' of any thing, from a temporary pause. Slant, (as in extant,) 
 would be merely the translation of ' standing ;' so I assume a participle 
 rf the obsolete ' statare-' to connect the adopted word with Statina, 
 (the goddess,) Statue, and State. 
 
V. OF ELEMENTA^^M 47 
 
 result is a quite balanced group ; more pleasing, if I mis- 
 take not, than any we have arrived at yet, because we 
 have here perfect order, with an unequal succession of 
 magnitudes in mass and interval, between the outer 
 circles. 
 
 12. By now gradually increasing the number of coins, 
 we can deduce a large variety of groups, more or less 
 pleasing, which you will find, on the whole, throw them- 
 
 FIG. 10. 
 
 selves either into garlanded shapes, seven, eight, and so 
 on, in a circle, with differences in the intervals ; or into 
 stellar shapes, of which the simplest is the cross, and the 
 more complex will be composed of five, six, seven, or 
 more rays, of various length. Then farther, successive 
 garlands may be added to the garlands, or crossing rays, 
 producing chequers, if we have unlimited command of 
 sixpences. But by no artifice of arrangement shall we be 
 
48 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 able to produce any perfectly interesting or beautiful 
 form, as long as our coins remain of tfie same size. 
 
 13. But now take some foiirpenny and threepenny 
 pieces also ; and, beginning with the cross, of five orbs 
 (Fig. 10), try first a sixpence in the middle, with four 
 fourpenny pieces round it ; and then a foiirpenny piece in 
 the middle, with four sixpences round it. Either group 
 will be more pleasing to you than the original one : and by 
 varying the intervals, and removing the surrounding coins 
 to greater or less distances, you may pleasantly vary even 
 this single group to a curious extent ; while if you in- 
 crease the number of coins, and farther vary their sizes, 
 adding shillings and half-crowns to your original re- 
 sources, you will find the producible variety of pleasant 
 figures quite infinite. 
 
 14. But, supposing your natural taste and feeling mod- 
 erately good, you will always feel some of the forms you 
 arrive at to be pleasanter than others ; for no explicable 
 reason, but that there is relation between their sizes and 
 distances which satisfies you as being under some harmo- 
 nious law. Up to a certain point, I could perhaps show 
 you logical cause for these preferences ; but the moment 
 the groups become really interesting, their relations will 
 be found far too complex for definition, and our choice of 
 one or another can no more be directed by rule, or ex- 
 plained by reason, than the degrees of enjoyment can be 
 dictated, or the reasons for admiration demonstrated, as 
 we look from Cassiopeia to Orion, or from the Pleiades to 
 Arcturus with his sons. 
 
 15. Three principles only you will find certain : 
 
 A, That perfect dependence of every thing on every 
 thing else, is necessary for pleasantness. 
 
V. OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 49 
 
 B, That such dependence can only become perfect 
 
 by means of differences in magnitude (or 
 other qualities, of course, when others are in- 
 troduced). 
 
 C, That some kind of balance, or ( equity,' is neces- 
 
 sary for our satisfaction in arrangements which 
 are clearly subjected to human interference. 
 
 You will be perhaps surprised, when you think of it, to 
 find that this last condition human interference, is very 
 greatly involved in the principles of contemplative pleas- 
 ure ; and that your eyes are both metaphysical, and 
 moral, in their approval and blame. 4 
 
 Thus, you have probably been fastidious, and found it 
 necessary to be so, before you could please yourself with 
 enough precision in balance of coin against coin, and of 
 one division of each coin-group against its fellow. But 
 you would not, I think, desire to arrange any of the con- 
 stellations I have just named, in two parallel parts ; or to 
 make the rock-forms on one side of a mountain valley, 
 merely the reversed images of those upon the other ? 
 
 16. Yet, even among these, you are sensible of a kind 
 of order, and rejoice in it ; nay, you find a higher pleas- 
 ure in the mystery of it. You would not desire to see 
 Orion and the Pleiades broken up, and scattered over the 
 sky in a shower of equal-sized stars, among which you 
 could no more trace group, or line, or pre-eminence. 
 Still less would you desire to see the stars, though of 
 different magnitudes, arrested on the vault of heaven in a 
 chequer-pattern, with the largest stars at the angles, or 
 appointed to rise and set in erected ranks, the same at 
 zenith and horizon ; never bowed, and never supine. 
 
 IT. The beautiful passage in Humboldt's ' Personal 
 
50 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 Narrative ' in which he describes the effect on his mind of 
 the first sight of the Southern Cross, may most fitly close, 
 confirm, and illumine, a chapter too wearisome ; by 
 which, however, I trust that you will be led into happier 
 trust in the natural likings and dislikings which are the 
 proper groundwork of taste in all things, finding that, in 
 things directly prepared for the service of men, a quite 
 palpable order and symmetry are felt by him to be beauti- 
 ful ; but in the things which involve interests wider than 
 his own, the mystery of a less comprehensible order be- 
 comes necessary for their sublimity, as, for instance, the 
 forms of mountains, or balances of stars, expressing their 
 birth in epochs of creation during which man had no ex- 
 istence, and their functions in preparing for a future state 
 of the world, over which he has no control. 
 
 " We saw distinctly for the first time the Cross of the 
 South only, in the night of the 4th and 5th of July, in 
 the sixteenth degree of latitude ; it was strongly inclined, 
 and appeared from time to time between the clouds, the 
 centre of which, furrowed by uncondensed lightnings, 
 reflected a silver light. 
 
 ' * If a traveller may ~be permitted to speak of his per- 
 sonal emotions,* I shall add, that in this night I saw one 
 of the reveries of my earliest youth accomplished. 
 ****** 
 
 " At a period when I studied the heavens, not with the 
 intention of devoting myself to astronomy, but only to 
 acquire a knowledge of the stars,^ I was agitated by a 
 
 * I italicise, because the reserve of the Personal Narrative, in this 
 respect, is almost majestic ; and entirely exemplary as compared with 
 the explosive egotism of the modem tourist. 
 
 f Again note the difference between modestly useful, and vainly am- 
 bitious, study. 
 
V. OF ELEMENTARY FORM. 51 
 
 fear unknown to those who love a sedentary life. It 
 seemed painful to me to renounce the hope of beholding 
 those beautiful constellations which border the southern 
 pole. Impatient to rove in the equinoctial regions, I 
 could not raise my eyes toward the starry vault without 
 thinking of the Cross of the South, and without recalling 
 the sublime passage of Dante, which the most celebrated 
 commentators have applied to this constellation : 
 
 ' Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi ment. 
 All' altro polo ; e vidi quattro. stelle 
 Non viste mai fuor ch' alia prima gente 
 Goder parea lo ciel di lor fiammelle ; 
 O settentrional vedovo sito, 
 Poi che private se' di mirar quelle !' 
 
 " The two great stars which mark the summit and the 
 foot of the Cross having nearly the same right ascension, 
 it follows hence that the constellation is almost perpendic- 
 ular at the moment w T hen it passes the meridian. This 
 circumstance is known to every nation that lives beyond 
 the tropics, or in the southern hemisphere. It has been 
 observed at what hour of the night, in different seasons, 
 the Cross of the South is erect, or inclined. It is a time- 
 piece that advances very regularly near four minutes a 
 day ; and no other group of stars exhibits, to the naked 
 eye, an observation of time so easily made. How often 
 have we heard our guides exclaim, in the savannahs of the 
 Venezuela, or in the desert extending from Lima to 
 Truxillo, ' Midnight is past, the Cross begins to bend ! ' 
 How often those words reminded us of that affecting 
 scene where Paul and Virginia, seated near the source of 
 the river of Latainers, conversed together for the last 
 time, and where the old man, at the sight of the South- 
 ern Cross, warns them that it is time to separate !" 
 
CHAPTER VT. 
 
 OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 1. AMONG the various arrangements made of the coins in 
 our last experiment, it appeared that those were on the 
 whole pleasantest which fell into some crosslet or stellar 
 disposition, referred to a centre. The reader might per- 
 haps suppose that, in making him feel this, I was prepar- 
 ing the way for assertion of the form of the cross, as a 
 beautiful one, for religious reasons. But this is not so. 
 I have given the St. George's cross for first practice, that 
 our art-work might be thus early associated with the other 
 studies of our schools ; but not as in any wise a dominant 
 or especially beautiful form. On the contrary, if we re- 
 duce it into perfectly simple lines, the pure cross" (a stellar 
 group of four lines at right angles) will be found to look 
 meagre when compared with the stellar groups of five, 
 six, or seven rays ;. and, in fact, its chief use, when em- 
 ployed as a decoration, is not in its possession of any sym- 
 bolic or abstract charm, but as the simplest expression of 
 accurate, and easy, mathematical division of space. It is 
 thus of great value in the decoration of severe architec- 
 ture, where it is definitely associated with square masonry : 
 but nothing could be more painful than its substitution, 
 in the form of tracery bars, for the stellar tracery of any 
 fine rose window ; though, in such a position, its symbolic 
 office would be perfect. The most imaginative and re- 
 
VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 53 
 
 ligious symbolist will, I think, be surprised to find, if lie 
 thus tries it fairly, how little symbolism can please, if 
 physical beauty be refused. 
 
 2. Nor do 1 doubt that the author of the book on 
 heraldry above referred to,* is right in tracing some of 
 the earliest forms of the heraldic cross itself " to the 
 metal clamps or braces required to strengthen and protect 
 the long, kite-shaped shield of the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries." The quartering of the field, which afterwards 
 became the foundation of the arrangement of bearings, 
 was thus naturally suggested by the laws of first construc- 
 tion. But the ' Somerset Herald ' pushes his modern 
 mechanics too far, when he confuses the Cross Fleury 
 with an " ornamental clamp" ? (p. 49). It is directly 
 traceable to the Byzantine Fleur-de-lys, and that to Ho- 
 mer's Iris. 
 
 3. So also with respect to the primary forms of crys- 
 tals, the pleasure of the eye in perceiving that the several 
 lines of a group may be traced to some common centre is 
 partly referable to our mere joy in orderly construction : 
 but, in our general judgment of design, it is founded on 
 our sense of the nature of radiant light and heat as the 
 strength of all organic life, together with our interest in no- 
 ticing either growth from a common root in plants, or de- 
 pendence on a nervous or otherwise vital centre in animal 
 organism, indicating not merely order of construction, but 
 process or sequence of animation. 
 
 4. The smallest number of lines which can completely 
 express this law of radiationf is five ; or if a completely 
 
 ' Pursuivant of Arms, ' p. 48. 
 
 t The groups of three, though often very lovely, do not clearly ex- 
 press radiation, but simply cohesion ; because by merely crowding 
 
54 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 opposite symmetry is required, six ; and the families of 
 all the beautiful flowers prepared for the direct service and 
 delight of man are constructed on these two primary 
 schemes, the rose representing the cinqfold radiation, 
 and the lily the sixfold, (produced by the two triangles of 
 the sepals and petals, crossed, in the figure called by the 
 Arabs l Solomon's Seal'); while the fourfold, or cruci- 
 form, are on the whole restricted to more servile utility. 
 One plant only, that I know of, in the Rose family, the 
 tormentilla, subdues itself to the cruciform type with a 
 grace in its simplicity which makes it, in mountain pas- 
 tures, the fitting companion of the heathbell and thyme. 
 
 5. I shall have occasion enough, during the flower study 
 carried on in ' Proserpina, ' to analyze the laws of stellar 
 grouping in flowers. In this book I shall go on at once 
 to the more complex forms produced by radiation under 
 some continually altering force, either of growth from a 
 root, or of motion from some given point under given law. 
 
 We will therefore return to our feather from the hen's 
 wing, and try to find out, by close examination, why we 
 think it, and other feathers, pretty. 
 
 6. You must observe first that the feathers of all birds 
 fall into three great classes : 
 
 (1) The Feathers for Clothing. 
 
 (2) The Feathers for Action. 
 
 (3) The Feathers for Ornament. 
 
 (1) Feathers for clothing are again necessarily divided 
 into (A) those which clothe for warmth, (down,) which are 
 
 three globes close to each other, you at once get a perfect triune form ; 
 but to put them in a circle of five or more, at equal distances from a 
 centre, requires an ordering and proportionate force. 
 
VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 55 
 
 the birds' blankets and flannel ; and (B) those which clothe 
 it for defence against weather or violence ; these last bear- 
 ing a beautiful resemblance partly to the tiles of a house, 
 partly to a knight's armor. They are imbricated against 
 rain and wind, like tiles ; but they play and move over 
 each other like mail, actually becoming effective armor to 
 many of the warrior birds ; as in the partial protection of 
 others from impact of driven boughs, or hail, or even shot. 
 
 (2) Feathers for action. These are essentially, again, 
 either (A) feathers of force, in the wing, or (B) of guid- 
 ance, in the tail, and are the noblest in structure which 
 the bird possesses. 
 
 (3) Feathers for ornament. These are, again, to be di- 
 vided into (A), those which modify the bird's form, (being 
 then mostly imposed as a crest on the head, or expanded 
 as a fan at the tail, or floating as a train of ethereal soft- 
 ness,) and (B) those which modify its color ; these last be- 
 ing, for the most part, only finer conditions of the armor 
 feathers on the neck, breast, and back, while the force- 
 feathers usually are reserved and quiet in color, though 
 more or less mottled, clouded, or barred. 
 
 7. Before proceeding to any closer observation of these 
 three classes of feathers, the student must observe gen- 
 erally how they must all be modified according to the 
 bird's size. Chiefly, of course, the feathers of action, 
 since these are strictly under physical laws determining 
 the scale of organic strength. It is just as impossible for 
 a large bird to move its wings with a rapid stroke, as for 
 the sail of a windmill, or of a ship, to vibrate like a lady's 
 fan. Therefore none but small birds can give a vibratory 
 (or insect-like) motion to their wings. On the other 
 hand, none but large birds can sail without stroke, because 
 
56 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 small wings can lot rest on a space of air large enough to 
 sustain the bod} 
 
 8. Therefore, broadly, first of all, birds range with 
 relation to thei] flight into three great classes : (A) the 
 sailing birds, who, having given themselves once a for- 
 ward impulse, can rest, merely with their wings open, on 
 the winds and clouds ; (B) the properly so-called flying 
 birds, who must strike with their wings, no less to sustain 
 themselves than to advance ; and, lastly, (c) the fluttering 
 birds, who can keep their wings quivering like those of a 
 fly, and therefore pause at will, in one spot in the air, 
 over a flower, or over their nest. And of these three 
 classes, the first are necessarily large birds (frigate-bird, 
 albatross, condor, and the like) ; the second, of average 
 bird-size, falling chiefly between the limiting proportions 
 of the swallow and seagull ; for a smaller bird than the 
 swift has not power enough over the air, and a larger one 
 than the seagull has not power enough over its wings, to 
 be a perfect flyer. 
 
 Finally, the birds of vibratory wing are all necessarily 
 minute, represented chiefly by the humming-birds ; but 
 sufficiently even by our own smaller and sprightlier pets : 
 the robin's quiver of his wing in leaping, for instance, is 
 far too swift to be distinctly seen. 
 
 9. These are the three main divisions of the birds for 
 whom the function of the wing is mainly flight. 
 
 But to us, human creatures, there is a class of birds 
 more pathetically interesting those in whom the function 
 of the wing is essentially, not flight, but the protection of 
 their young. 
 
 Of these, the two most familiar to us are the domestic 
 fowl and the partridge ; and there is nothing in arrange- 
 
VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 57 
 
 ment of plumage approaching the exquisiteness of that in 
 the vaulted roofs of their expanded covering wings ; nor 
 does any thing I know in decoration rival the consummate 
 art of the minute cirrus-clouding of the partridge's breast. 
 
 10. But before we can understand either the structure 
 of the striking plumes, or the tincture of the decorative 
 ones, we must learn the manner in which all plumes what- 
 soever are primarily made. 
 
 Any feather (as you know, but had better nevertheless 
 take the first you can find in your hand to look at, as you 
 read on) is composed of a central quill, like the central 
 rib of a leaf, with fine rays branching from it on each 
 side, united, if the feather be a strong one, into a more 
 or less silky tissue or ( web,' as it has hitherto been called 
 by naturalists.* Not unreasonably, in some respects ; for 
 
 * So far as one can make out what they call any thing ! The follow- 
 ing lucid passage is all that in the seven hundred closely printed pages 
 of Mr. Swainson's popular ornithology, the innocent reader will find 
 vouchsafed to him in description of feathers ( 71, p. 77, vol. 1) : 
 " The regular external feathers of the body, like those of the wings and 
 tail, are very differently constructed from such as are called the down ; 
 they are externally composed of three parts or substances : 1. The 
 down ; 2. The laminae, or webs (!) ; and, 3. The shaft, or quill, on the 
 sides of which the two former are arranged. The downy laminae, or 
 webs of these feathers, are very different from the substance we have 
 just described, since they not only have a distinct shaft of their own, 
 but the laminae which spring from both sides of it are perceptibly and 
 regularly arranged, although, from being devoid of all elasticity, (!) like 
 true down, they do not unite and repose parallel to each other. The 
 soft downy laminae are always situated close to the insertion of the 
 quill into the skin ; and although, for obvious reasons, they are more 
 developed on those feathers which cover the body, they likewise exist 
 on such as are employed in flight, as shown in the quill of a goose ; 
 and as they are always concealed from sight when the plumage is un- 
 injured, and are not exposed to the action of the air, so they are al- 
 
58 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 truly it is a woven thing, with a warp and woof, beautiful 
 as Penelope's or Arachne's tapestry ; but with this of 
 marvel beyond beauty in it, that it is a web which re- 
 weaves itself when you tear it ! Closes itself as perfectly 
 as a sea- wave torn by the winds, being indeed nothing else 
 than a wave of silken sea, which the winds trouble enough ; 
 and fret along the edge of it, like fretful Benacus at its 
 shore ; but which, tear it as they will, closes into its un- 
 ruffledr strength again in an instant. 
 
 11. There is a problem for you, and your engines, 
 good my Manchester friends ! What with Thirlmere to 
 fill your boilers, and cotton grown by free niggers, surely 
 the forces of the universe must be favorable to you, and, 
 indeed, wholly at your disposal. Yet of late I have heard 
 that your various tissues tear too easily ; how if you 
 could produce them such as that they could mend them- 
 selves again without help from a sewing-machine ! (for 1 
 find my glove -fingers, sewn up the seam by that great 
 economist of labor, split down all at once like walnut-shells). 
 
 ways colorless. The third part of a feather consists in the true external 
 laminae, which are arranged in two series, one on each side the shaft ; 
 and these sides are called the external and the internal (! !) webs. To 
 outward appearance, the form of the lamiuae which compose these 
 webs appears to be much the same as that of down, which has been 
 just described, wih this difference only, that the laminae are stronger 
 and elastic, and seem to stick together, and form a parallel series, 
 which the downy lamina? do not. Now, this s'ngular adhesiveness is 
 seen by the microscope to be occasioned by the filaments on each side 
 of these lamina? being hooked into those of the next laminae, so that 
 one supports the other in the same position ; while their elasticity (!) 
 makes them return to their proper place in the series, if by any acci- 
 dent they are discomposed. This will be sufficient to give the reader 
 a correct idea of the general construction of a feather, without going 
 into further details on the microscopic appearance of the parts." 
 
VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 59 
 
 But even that Arabian web which could 
 walnut-shell would have no chance of rivalling with yours 
 if you could match the delicate spirit that weaves a spar- 
 row's wing. (I suppose you have no other birds to look 
 at now within fifty miles.) 
 
 However, from the bodies of birds, plucked for eating 
 or the skins of them, stuffed for wearing, I do not doubt 
 but the reader, though inhabitant of modern English 
 towns, may still possess himself, or herself, of a feather 
 large enough to be easily studied ;* nay, I believe British 
 Law still indites itself with the legitimate goose-feather. 
 If that be attainable, with grateful reverence to law, in 
 general, and to real Scripture, which is only possible with 
 quill or reed ; and to real music, of Doric eagerness, 
 touched of old for the oaks and rills, while the still morn 
 went out with sandals gray, we will therewith begin our 
 inquiry into the weaving of plumes. 
 
 12. And now, for convenience of description, observe, 
 that as all feathers lie backwards from the bird's head to- 
 wards its tail, when we hold one in our hand by the point 
 of the quill so as to look at its upper surface, we are vir- 
 tually looking from the bird's head towards the tail of it : 
 therefore, unless with warning of the contrary, 1 shall al- 
 ways describe the feathers which belong to the bird's 
 right side, which, when we look down on its back and 
 wing, with the head towards us, curve for the most part 
 with the convex edge to our own left ; and when we look 
 down on its throat and breast, with the head towards us, 
 curve for the most part with the convex edge to our 
 right. 
 
 * My ingenious friend, Mr. W. E. Dawes, of 72 Denmark Hill, will 
 attend scrupulously to a feather, to any orders sent him from Fesole. 
 
60 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 13. Choosing, therefore, a goose-feather from the bird's 
 right wing, and holding it with the upper surface up- 
 wards, you see it curves to your own right, with convex 
 edge to the left ; and that it is composed mainly of the 
 rapidly tapering quill, with its two so-called i webs,' one 
 on each side, meeting in a more or less blunt point at the 
 top, like that of a kitchen carving-knife. 
 
 14. But I do not like the word ' web ' for these tissues 
 of the feather, for two reasons : the first, that it would 
 get confused with the word we must use for the mem- 
 brane of the foot ; and the second, that feathers of force 
 continually resemble swords or scimitars, striking both 
 with flat and edge ; and one cannot rightly talk of striking 
 with a web ! And I have been a long time (this number 
 of Fesole having, indeed, been materially hindered by this 
 hesitation) in deciding upon any name likely to be accept- 
 able to my readers for these all-important parts of the 
 plume structure. The one I have at last fixed upon, 
 * Fret,'* will not on the instant approve itself to them ; 
 but they will be content with it, I believe, in use. I take 
 it from the constant fretting or rippling of the surface of 
 the tissue, even when it is not torn along its edge,f and 
 one can fancy a sword ' fretted ' at its edge, easily 
 enough. 
 
 15. The two frets are composed, you see, each of (I 
 was going to write, innumerable ; but they are quite 
 numerable, though many,) smaller feathers ; for they 
 are nothing lese, each of them, than a perfect little feather 
 in its own way. You will find it convenient to call these 
 
 * ' Vane ' is used in the English translation of Cuvier ; but would 
 be too apt to suggest rotation in the quill, as in a weathercock, 
 f See ' Love's Meinie,' Lecture 1., page 33. 
 

 VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 61 
 
 the ' rays.' In a goose's feather there are from thirty to 
 forty in an inch of the fret ; three or four hundred, that 
 is to say, on each side of the quill. You see and much 
 more, may feel how firmly these plumelets fasten them- 
 selves together to form the continuous strength of silken 
 tissue of the fret. 
 
 16. Pull one away from the rest, and you iind it com- 
 posed of a white piece of the substance of the quill, ex- 
 tended into a long, slightly hollowed strip, something like 
 the awn of a grain of oats each edge of this narrow white 
 strip being fringed with an exquisitely minute series of 
 minor points, or teeth, like the teeth of a comb, becoming 
 softer and longer towards the end of the ray, where also 
 the flat, chaff -like strip of quill becomes little more than 
 a fine rod. 
 
 Again, for names clear and short enough to be pleas- 
 antly useful, I was here much at a loss, and cannot more 
 satisfactorily extricate myself than by calling the awnlike 
 shaft simply the ' Shaft ;' and the fine points of its ser- 
 rated edges, (and whatever, in other feathers, these be- 
 come,) ' Barbs.' 
 
 17. If, with a sharp pair of scissors, you cut the two frets 
 away from the quill, down the whole length of it, you will 
 find the frets still hold together, inlaid, woven together by 
 their barbs into a white soft riband, feeling just like satin 
 to the finger, and looking like it on the under surface, which 
 is exquisitely lustrous and smooth. And it needs a lens of 
 some power to show clearly the texture of the fine barbs 
 that weave the web, as it used to be called, of the whole. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the goose feather, the rays terminate 
 somewhat* irregularly and raggedly ; and it will be better 
 now to take for further examination the plume of a more 
 
 
62 THE LAWS OF FfiSOLE. 
 
 strongly flying bird. I take that of the common seagull,* 
 where, in exquisite gray and dark-brown, the first ele- 
 ments of variegation are also shown at the extremity of 
 the plume. 
 
 18. And here the edge of the fret is rippled indeed, 
 but not torn ; the quill tapers with exquisite subtlety ; 
 and another important part of plumage occurs at the root 
 of it. There the shafts of the rays loose their stiffness 
 and breadth ; they become mere threads, on which the 
 barbs become long and fine like hairs ; and the w r hole 
 plumelet becomes a wavy, wild- wandering thing, each at 
 last entangled with its fluttering neighbors, and forming 
 what we call the ' down ' of the feather, where the bird 
 needs to be kept warm. 
 
 19. When the shafts change into these wandering 
 threads, they will be called filaments ; and the barbs, 
 when they become fine detached hairs, will be called cilia. 
 I am very sorry to have all this nomenclature to inflict at 
 once ; but it is absolutely needful, all of it ; nor difficult 
 to learn, if you will only keep a feather in your hand as 
 you learn it. A feather always consists of the quill and its 
 rays ; a ray, of the shaft and its barbs. Flexible shafts 
 are filaments ; and flexible barbs, cilia. 
 
 20. In none of the works which I at present possess on 
 ornithology, is any account given of the general form or 
 nature of any of these parts of a plume ; although of all 
 subjects for scientific investigation, supremely serviceable 
 to youth, this is, one should have thought, the nearest 
 and most tempting, to any person of frank heart. To be- 
 gin with it, we must think of all feathers first as exactly 
 
 * Larus Canus, (Limiams,) ' White Seamew.' St. George's English 
 name for it. 
 

 VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 63 
 
 intermediate between the fur of animals and scales of 
 fish. They are fur, made strong, and arranged in scales 
 or plates, partly defensive armor, partly active instru- 
 ments of motion or action.* And there are definitely 
 three textures of this strengthened fur, variously pleasura- 
 ble to the eye : the first, a dead texture like that of simple 
 silk in its cocoon, or wool ; receptant of pattern colors in 
 definite stain, as in the thrush or partridge ; secondly, a tex- 
 ture like that of lustrous shot silk, soft, but reflecting differ- 
 ent colors and different lights, as in the dove, pheasant, and 
 peacock ; thirdly, a quite brilliant texture, flaming like met- 
 al nay, sometimes more brightly than any polished armor ; 
 and this also reflective of different colors in different 
 lights, as in the humming-bird. Between these three typ- 
 ical kinds of lustre, there is every gradation ; the tender 
 lustre of the dove's plumage being intermediate between 
 the bloomy softness of the partridge, and the more than 
 rainbow iridescence of the peacock ; while the semi-me- 
 tallic, unctuous, or pitchy lustre of the raven, is midway 
 between the silken and metallic groups. . 
 
 21: These different modes of lustre and color depend 
 entirely on the structure of the barbs and cilia. I do not 
 often invite my readers to use a microscope ; but for 
 once, and for a little while, we will take the tormenting aid 
 of it. 
 
 In all feathers used for flight, the barbs are many and 
 
 * Compare ' Love's Meinie,' Lecture I., pp. 28, 29 ; but I find my- 
 self now compelled to give more definite analysis of structure by the 
 entirely inconceivable, (till one discovers it,) absence of any such 
 analysis in books on birds. Their writers all go straight at the bones, 
 like hungry dogs ; and spit out the feathers as if they were choked by 
 them. 
 
 
64: THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 minute, for the purpose of locking the shafts well to- 
 gether. But in covering and decorative plumes, they 
 themselves become principal, and the shafts subordinate. 
 And, since of flying plumes we have first taken the sea- 
 gull's wing feather, of covering plumes we will first take 
 one from the seagull's breast. 
 
 22. I take one, therefore, from quite the middle of a 
 seamew's breast, where the frets are equal in breadth on 
 each side. You see, first, that the whole plume is bent 
 almost into the shape of a cup ; and that the soft white 
 lustre plays variously on its rounded surface, as you turn 
 it more or less to the light. This is the first condition of 
 all beautiful forms. Until you can express this rounded 
 surface, you need riot think you can draw them at all. 
 
 ^Z^Z^s?^^ 
 
 FIG. 11. 
 
 23. But for the present, I only want you to notice the 
 structure and order of its rays. Any single shaft with its 
 lateral barbs, towards the top of the feather, you will find 
 approximately of the form Fig. 11, the central shaft being 
 so fine that towards the extremity it is quite lost sight of ; 
 and the end of the rays being not formed by the extrem- 
 ity of the shaft, with barbs tapering to it, but by the 
 forked separation, like the notch of an arrow, of the two 
 ultimate barbs. 
 
 Which, please, observe to be indeed the normal form 
 of all feathers, as opposed to that of leaves ; so that the 
 end of a feather, however finely disguised, is normally as 
 at A, Fig. 12 ; but of a leaf, as at B ; the arrow-like form 
 of the feather being developed into the most lovely dupli- 
 
VI. OF ELEMENTAKY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 65 
 
 cated symmetries of outline and pattern, by which, 
 throughout, the color designs of feathers, and of floral 
 petals, (which are the sign of the dual or married life in 
 the flower, raising it towards the rank of animal nature,) 
 
 FIG. 12. 
 
 are distinguished from the color designs in minerals, and 
 in merely wood-forming, as opposed to floral, or seed- 
 forming, leaves. 
 
 24:. You will observe also, in the detached ray, that the 
 barbs lengthen downwards, and most distinctly from the 
 middle downwards ; and now taking up the wing-feather 
 again, you will see that its frets being constructed by the 
 imbrication, or laying over each other like the tiles of a 
 house, of the edges of the successive rays, on the upper 
 
 FIG. 13. 
 
 or outer surface of the plume, the edges are overlaid 
 towards the plume-><9m, like breaking waves over each 
 other towards shore ; and of course, on the under surface, 
 reversed, and overlaid towards the root of the quill. 
 
6G 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 Yon may understand this in a moment by cutting out 
 roughly three little bits of cardboard, of this shape (Fig. 
 13), and drawing the directions of the barbs on them : I. 
 cut their ends square because they are too short to rep- 
 resent the lengths of real rays, but are quite long enough 
 to illustrate their imbrication. Lay first the three of 
 them in this position, (Fig. 14, A,) with their points to- 
 wards yon, one above the other ; then put the edge of 
 the lowest over the edge of that above it, and the edge of 
 that over the third, so as just to show the central shaft, 
 and you will get three edges, with their barbs all vertical, 
 
 FIG. 14. 
 
 or nearly so : that is the structure of the plume's upper 
 surface. Then put the edges of the farther off ones over 
 the nearer, and you get three edges with their barbs all 
 transverse, (Fig. 14, B,) which is the structure of the 
 plume's lower surface. There are, of course, endless sub- 
 tleties and changes of adjustment, but that is the first 
 general law to be understood. 
 
 25. It follows, as a necessary consequence of this ar- 
 rangement, that we may generally speak of the barbs which 
 form the upper surface of the feather as the upper, or 
 
VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 67 
 
 longitudinal, barbs, meaning those which He parallel to 
 the quill, pointing to the end of the feather ; and of those 
 which form the under surface of the feather as the lower, 
 or transverse, barbs, lying, that is to say, nearly trans- 
 versely across the feather, at right angles to the quill. 
 And farther, as you see that the quill shows itself clearly 
 projecting from the under surface of the plume, so the 
 shafts show themselves clearly projecting, in a corduroy 
 fashion, on the under surface of the fret, the transverse 
 barbs being seen only in the furrows between them. 
 
 26. Now, I should think, in looking carefully at this 
 close structure of quill and shaft, you will be more and 
 more struck by their resemblance to the beams and tiles 
 of a roof. The feather is, in fact, a finely raftered and 
 tiled roof to throw off wind and rain ; and in a large fam- 
 ily of birds the wing has indeed chiefly a roof's office, and 
 is not only raftered and tiled, but vaulted, for the roof of 
 the nursery. Of which hereafter ; in the meantime, get 
 this clearly into your head, that on the upper surface of 
 the plume the tiles are overlaid from the bird's head back- 
 ward so as to have their edges away from the wind, -that 
 it may slide over them as the bird flies ; and the furrows 
 formed by the barbs lie parallel with the quill, so as to 
 give the least possible friction. The under side of the 
 plume, you may then always no less easily remember, has 
 the transverse barbs ; and tile-edges towards the bird's 
 head. The beauty and color of the plume, therefore, de- 
 pend mainly on the formation of the longitudinal barbs, 
 as long as the fret is close and firm. But it is kept close 
 and firm throughout only in the wing feathers ; expand- 
 ing in the decorative ones, under entirely different condi- 
 tions. 
 
68 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 27. Looking more closely at your seamew's breast- 
 feather, you will see that the rays lock themselves close 
 only in the middle of it ; and that this close-locked space 
 is limited by a quite definite line, outside of which the 
 rays contract their barbs into a thick and close thread, 
 each such thread detached from its neighbors, and form- 
 ing a snowy fringe of pure white, while the close-locked 
 part is toned, by the shades which show you its structure, 
 into a silver gray. 
 
 Finally, at the root of the feather, not only do its own 
 rays change into down, but underneath, you find a supple- 
 mentary plume attached, composed of nothing else but 
 down. 
 
 28. I find no account, in any of my books on birds, of 
 the range of these supplementary under-pi nines, the 
 bird's body-clothing. I find the seagull has them nearly 
 all over its body, neck, breast, and back alike ; the small 
 feathers on the head are nothing else than down. But 
 
 O 
 
 besides these, or in the place of these, some birds have 
 down covering the skin itself ; with which, however, the 
 painter has nothing to do, nor even with the supplemen- 
 tary plumes : and already indeed I have allowed the pupil, 
 in using the microscope at" all, to go beyond the proper 
 limits of artistic investigation. Yet, while we have the 
 lens in our hand, put on for once its full power to look at 
 the separate cilia of the down. They are all jointed like 
 canes ; and have, doubtless, mechanism at the joints 
 which no eye nor lens can trace. The same structure, 
 modified, increases the lustre of the true barbs in colored 
 plumes. 
 
 One of the simplest of these I will now take, from the 
 back of the peacock, for a first study of plume-radiation. 
 
VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 
 
 69 
 
 29. Its general outline is that of the Gorman shield p A 
 v B, Fig. 15 ; but within this outline, the frets are close- 
 woven only within the battledore-shaped space p a v ft ; 
 and between A #, and 5 B, they expand their shafts into 
 filaments, and their barbs into cilia, and become ' down. ' 
 
 We are only able to determine the arrangement of the 
 shafts within this closely- woven space p a v 5, which you 
 will find to be typically thus. The shafts remaining par- 
 allel most of the way up, towards the top of the plume, 
 gradually throw themselves forward, so as to get round 
 without gap. But as, while they are thus getting round, 
 
 
 
 they are not fastened on a central pivot like the rays of a 
 fan, but have still to take, each its ascending place on the 
 sides of the quill, we get a method of radiation which 
 you will find convenient henceforward to call ' plume- 
 radiation,' (Fig. 16, B,) which is precisely intermediate 
 between two other great modes of structure shell-radia- 
 tion, A, and frond-radiation, c. 
 
 30. You may perhaps have thought yourself very 
 hardly treated in being obliged to begin your natural his- 
 tory drawing with so delicate a thing as a feather. But 
 
70 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 yon should rather be very grateful to me, for not having 
 given yon, instead, a bit of moss, or a cockle-shell ! - The 
 last, which yon might perhaps fancy the easiest of the 
 three, is in reality quite hopelessly difficult, and in its 
 ultimate condition, inimitable by art. Bewick can 
 engrave feathers to the point of deceptive similitude ; and 
 Hunt can paint a birdVnest built of feathers, lichen, and 
 moss. But neither the one nor the other ever attempted 
 to render the diverging lines which have their origin in 
 the hinge of the commonest bivalve shell. 
 
 31. These exactly reverse the condition of frond radia- 
 tion ; in that, while the frond-branch is thick at the 
 
 origin, and diminishes to the extremity, the shell flutings, 
 infinitely minute at the origin, expand into vigorous un- 
 dulation at the edge. But the essential point you have 
 now to observe is, that the shell radiation is from a cen- 
 tral point , and has no supporting or continuous stem ; 
 that the plume radiation is a combination of stem and 
 centre ; and that the frond radiation has a stem through- 
 out, all the way up. It is to be called frond, not tree, 
 radiation, because trees in great part of their structure are 
 like plumage, whereas the fern-frond is entirely and accu- 
 rately distinct in its structure. 
 
DECORATIVE PLUMAGE 1 PEACOCK. 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing. Plate. V. 
 
VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 71 
 
 32. And now, at last, I draw the entire feather as well 
 as 1 can in lampblack, for an exercise to you in that mate- 
 rial ; putting a copy of the first stage of the work below 
 it, Plate V. This lower figure may be with advantage 
 copied by beginners ; with the pencil and rather dry 
 lampblack, over slight lead outline ; the upper one is for 
 advanced practice, though such minute drawing, where the 
 pattern is wrought out with separate lines, is of course 
 only introductory to true painter's work. But it is the 
 best possible introduction, being exactly intermediate be- 
 tween such execution as Durer's, of the wing in the 
 greater Fortune, and Turner's or Holbein's with the 
 broad pencil, of which in due time. 
 
 33. Respecting the two exercises in Plate V., observe, 
 the lower figure is not an outline of the feather, to be 
 filled up ; it is the first stage of the drawing completed 
 above it. In order to draw the curves of the shafts har- 
 moniously, you must first put in a smaller number of 
 guiding lines, and then fill in between. But in this pri- 
 mary state, the radiant lines cannot but remind you, if 
 you are at all familiar with architecture, of a Greek 
 ' honey -suckle ' ornament, the fact being that the said 
 ornament has nothing at all to do with honey-suckles ; but 
 is a general expression of the radiate organic power of 
 natural forms, evermore delightful to human eyes ; arid 
 the beauty of it depends on just as subtle care in bringing 
 the curves into harmonious flow, as you will have to use 
 in drawing this plume. 
 
 34. Nevertheless, that students possessing some already 
 practised power may not be left without field for its exer- 
 cise, I have given in Plate VI. an example of the use of 
 ink and lampblack with the common pen and broad wash. 
 
T2 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 The outline is to be made with common ink in any ordi- 
 nary pen steel or quill does not matter, if not too fine 
 and, after it is thoroughly dry, the shade put on with a 
 single wash, adding the necessary darks, or taking out 
 light with the dry brush, as the tint dries, but allowing no 
 retouch after it is once dry. The reason of this law is, 
 first, to concentrate the attention on the fullest possible 
 expression of forms by the tint first laid, which is always 
 the pleasantest that can be laid, and, secondly, that the 
 shades may be all necessarily gradated by running into the 
 wet tint, and no edge left to be modified afterwards. 
 The outline, that it may be indelible, is made with com- 
 mon ink ; its slight softening by the subsequent wash be- 
 ing properly calculated on : but it must not be washed 
 twice over. 
 
 35. The exercise in the lower figure of Plate I. is an 
 example of Durer's manner ; but I do not care to compel 
 the pupil to go through much of this, because it is always 
 unsatisfactory at its finest. Durer himself has to indicate 
 the sweep of his plume with a current external line ; and 
 even Bewick could not have done plume patterns in line, 
 unless he had had the advantage of being able to cut out 
 his white ; but with the pencil, and due patience in the 
 use of it, every thing linear in plumes may be rightly in- 
 dicated, and the pattern followed all the time. 
 
 The minute moss-like fringe at the edge of the feather 
 in Plate V. introduces us, however, to another condition 
 of decorative plumage, which, though not bearing on our 
 immediate subject of radiation, we may as well notice at 
 once. 
 
 If you examine a fine tail-feather of the peacock, above 
 the eye of it, you will find a transparent space formed by 
 
VI. OF ELEMENTARY ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 73 
 
 the cessation of the barbs along a certain portion of the 
 shaft. On the most scintillant of the rays, which have 
 green and golden barbs, and in the lovely blue rays of 
 the breast-plumes, these cessations of the barbs become 
 alternate cuts or jags ; while at the end of the long brown 
 wing-feathers, they comply with the colored pattern : so 
 that, at the end of the clouded plume, its pattern, instead 
 of being constructed of brown and white barbs, is con- 
 structed of brown and no barbs, but vacant spaces. 
 The decorative use of this transparency consists in letting 
 the color of one plume through that of the other, so that 
 not only every possible artifice is employed to obtain the 
 most lovely play of color on the plume itself ; but, with 
 mystery through mystery, the one glows and flushes 
 through the other, like cloud seen through cloud. But 
 now, before we can learn how either glow, or flush, or 
 bloom are to be painted, we must learn our alphabet of 
 color itself. 
 
CHAPTEE YIL 
 
 OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 
 
 1. Il 1 my introductory Oxford lectures you will find it 
 stated ( 130) that " all objects appear to the eye merely 
 as masses of color ^ and ( 134, 175) that shadows are 
 as full in color as lights are; every possible shade being a 
 light to the shades below it, and every possible light, a 
 shade to the lights above it, till you come to absolute 
 darkness on one side, and to the sun on the other. 
 Therefore, you are to consider all the various pieces either 
 of shaded or lighted color, out of which any scene what- 
 soever is composed, simply as the patches of a Harle- 
 quin's jacket of which some are black, some red, some 
 blue, some golden ; but of which you are to imitate every 
 one, by the same methods. 
 
 2. It is of great importance that you should understand 
 how much this statement implies. In almost all the re- 
 ceived codes of art-instruction, you will be told that shad- 
 ows should be transparent, and lights solid. You will 
 find also, when you begin drawing yourselves, that your 
 shadows, whether laid with lead, chalk, or pencil, will for 
 the most part really look like dirt or blotches on the 
 paper, till you cross-hatch or stipple them, so as to give 
 them a look of network ; upon which they instantly be- 
 come more or less like shade ; or, as it is called, ' trans- 
 parent. ' And you will find a most powerful and attrac- 
 
VII. OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 75 
 
 tive school of art founded on the general principle of lay- 
 ing a literally transparent brown all over the picture, for 
 the shade ; and striking the lights upon it with opaque 
 white. 
 
 3. Now the statement I have just made to you (in 1) 
 implies the falseness of all such theories and methods.* 
 And I mean to assert that falsity in the most positive 
 manner. Shadows are not more transparent than lights, 
 nor lights than shadows ; both are transparent, when they 
 express space ; both are opaque, when they express sub- 
 stance ; and both are to be imitated in precisely the same 
 manner, and with the same quality, of pigment. The 
 only technical law which is indeed constant, and which 
 requires to be observed with strictness, is precisely that 
 the method shall be uniform. You may take a white 
 ground, and lay darks on it, leaving the white for lights ; 
 or you may take a dark ground, and lay lights on it, leav- 
 ing the dark for darks : in either case you must go on as 
 you begin, and not introduce the other method where it 
 suits you. A glass painter must make his whole picture 
 transparent ; and a fresco painter, his whole picture 
 opaque. 
 
 4. Get, then, this plain principle well infixed in your 
 minds. Here is a crocus there is the sun here a piece 
 of coal there, the hollow of the coal-scuttle it came out 
 of. They are every one but patches of color, some yel- 
 low, some black ; and must be painted in the same man- 
 ner, with whatever yellow or black paint is handy. 
 
 5. Suppose it, however, admitted that lights and shades 
 
 * Essentially, the use of transparent brown by Rubens, (followed by 
 Sir Joshua with asphaltum,) ruined the Netherland schools of color, 
 and has rendered a school of color in England hitherto impossible. 
 
76 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 are to be produced in the same manner ; we have farther 
 to ask, what that manner may best be ? 
 
 You will continually hear artists disputing about 
 grounds, glazings, vehicles, varnishes, transparencies, 
 opacities, oleaginousnesses. All that talk is as idle as the 
 east wind. Get a flat surface that won't crack, some 
 colored substance that will stick upon it, and remain 
 always of the color it was when you put it on, and a 
 pig's bristle or two, wedged in a stick ; and if you can't 
 paint, you are no painter ; and had better not talk about 
 the art. 
 
 The one thing you have to learn the one power truly 
 called that of ' painting ' is to lay on any colored sub- 
 stance, whatever its consistence may be, (from mortar to 
 ether,) at once, of the exact tint you want, in the exact 
 form you w r ant, and in the exact quantity you want. 
 That is painting. 
 
 6. Now, you are well aware that to play on the violin 
 well, requires some practice. Painting is playing on a 
 color-violin, seventy-times-seven stringed, and inventing 
 your tune as you play it ! That is the easy, simple, 
 straightforward business you have to learn. Here is your 
 catgut and your mahogany, better or worse quality of 
 both of course there may be, Cremona tone, and so on, 
 to be discussed with due care, in due time ; you cannot 
 paint miniature on the sail of a fishing-boat, nor do the fine 
 work with hog's bristles that you can with camel's hair : 
 all these catgut and bristle questions shall have their 
 place ; but, the primary question of all is can you 
 play f 
 
 1. Perfectly, you never can, but by birth-gift. The 
 entirely first-rate musicians and painters are born, like 
 
VII. OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 77 
 
 Mercury ; their words are music, and their touch is 
 gold ; sound and color wait on them from their youth ; 
 and no practice will ever enable other human creatures to 
 do any thing like them. The most favorable conditions, 
 the most docile and apt temper, and the unwearied prac- 
 tice of life, will never enable any painter of merely aver- 
 age human capacity to lay a single touch like Gains- 
 borough, Yelasquez, Tintoret, or Luini. But to under- 
 stand that the matter must still depend on practice as 
 well as on genius, that painting is not one whit less, but 
 more, difficult than playing on an instrument, and that 
 your care as a student, on the whole, is not to be given to 
 the quality of your piano, but of your touch, this is 
 the great fact which I have to teach you respecting 
 color ; this is the root of all excellent doing and perceiv- 
 ing. 
 
 And you will be utterly amazed, when once you begin 
 to feel what color means, to find how many qualities 
 which appear to result from peculiar method and material 
 do indeed depend only on loveliness of execution ; and 
 how divine the law of nature is, which has so connected 
 the immortality of beauty with patience of industry, that 
 by precision and rightness of laborious art you may at last 
 literally command the rainbow to stay, and forbid the sun 
 to set. 
 
 8. To-day, then, you are to begin to learn your notes 
 to hammer out, steadily, your first five-finger exercises ; 
 and as in music you have first to play in true time, with 
 stubborn firmness, so in color the first thing you have to 
 learn is to lay it flat, and well within limits. You shall 
 have it first within linear limits of extreme simplicity, 
 and you must be content to fill spaces so enclosed, again 
 
78 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 and again and again, till you are perfectly sure of your 
 skill up to that elementary point. 
 
 9. So far, then, of the manner in which you are to lay 
 your color ; next comes the more debatable question yet, 
 what kind of color you are thus to lay, sober, or bright. 
 For you are likely often to have heard it said that people 
 of taste like subdued or dull colors, and that only vulgar 
 persons like bright ones. 
 
 But I believe you will find the standard of color I am 
 going to give you, an extremely safe one the morning 
 sky. Love that rightly with all your heart, and soul, and 
 eyes ; and you are established in foundation-laws of color. 
 The white, blue, purple, gold, scarlet, and ruby of morn- 
 ing clouds, are meant to be entirely delightful to the 
 human creatures whom the ' clouds and light ' sustain. 
 Be sure you are always ready to see them, the moment 
 they are painted by God for you. 
 
 But you must not rest in these. It is possible to love 
 them intensely, and yet to have no understanding of the 
 modesty or tenderness of color. 
 
 Therefore, next to the crystalline firmament over you, 
 the crystalline earth beneath your feet is to be your 
 standard. 
 
 Flint, reduced to a natural glass containing about ten 
 per cent of water, forms the opal ; which gives every 
 lower hue of the prism in as true perfection as the clouds ; 
 but not the scarlet or gold, both which are crude and vul- 
 gar in opal. Its perfect hues are the green, blue, and pur- 
 ple. Emerald and lapis-lazuli give central green and blue 
 in fulness ; and the natural hues of all true gems, and of 
 the marbles, jaspers, and chalcedonies, are types of inter- 
 mediate tint : the oxides of iron, especially, of reds. All 
 
VII. OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 79 
 
 these earth-colors are curiously prepared for right stand- 
 ards : there is no misleading in them. 
 
 10. Not so when we come to the colors of flowers and 
 animals. Some of these are entirely pure and heavenly ; 
 the dove can contend with the opal, the rose with the 
 clouds, and the gentian with the sky ; but many animals 
 and flowers are stained with vulgar, vicious, or discordant 
 colors. But all those intended for the service and compan- 
 ionship of man are typically fair in color ; and therefore 
 especially the fruits and flowers of temperate climates ; 
 the purple of the grape and plum ; the red of the currant 
 and strawberry, and of the expressed juices of these, the 
 wine that " giveth his color in the cup," and the " lucent 
 syrup tinct with cinnamon. " With these, in various sub- 
 ordination, are associated the infinitudes of quiet and har- 
 monized color on which the eye is intended to repose ; 
 the softer duns and browns of birds and animals, made 
 quaint by figured patterns ; and the tender green and gray 
 of vegetation and rock. 
 
 11. ~No science, but only innocence, gayety of heart, 
 and ordinary health and common sense, are needed, to 
 enable us to enjoy all these natural colors rightly. But 
 the more grave hues, which, in the system of nature, are 
 associated with danger or death, have become, during the 
 later practice of art, pleasing in a mysterious way to the 
 most accomplished artists : so that the greatest masters of 
 the sixteenth century may be recognized chiefly by their 
 power of producing beauty with subdued colors. I can- 
 not enter here into the most subtle and vital question of 
 the difference between the subdued colors of Velasquez or 
 Tiiitoret, and the daubed gray and black of the modern 
 
80 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 French school ;* still less into any analysis of the grotesque 
 inconsistency which makes the foreign modern schools, 
 generally, repaint all sober and tender pictures with glar- 
 ing colors, and yet reduce the pure colors of landscape to 
 
 * One great cause of the delay which has taken place in the publi- 
 cation of this book has been my doubt of the proper time and degree 
 in which study in subdued color shoulo! be undertaken. For though, 
 on the one hand, the entirely barbarous glare of modern colored illus- 
 tration would induce me to order practice in subdued color merely for 
 antidote to it ; on the other, the affectation, or morbid reality, of 
 delight in subdued color, are among the fatallest errors of semi-artists. 
 The attacks on Turner in his greatest time were grounded in real feel- 
 ing, on the part of his adversaries, of the solemnity in the subdued 
 tones of the schools of classic landscape. 
 
 To a certain extent, therefore, the manner of study in color required 
 of any student must be left to the discretion of the master, who alone 
 can determine what qualities of color the pupil is least sensible to ; and 
 set before him examples of brightness, if he has become affectedly 
 grave, and of subdued harmony, if he errs by crudeness and discord. 
 But the general law must be to practise first in pure color, and then, 
 as our sense of what is grave and noble in life and conduct increases, 
 to express what feeling we have of such things in the hues belonging 
 to them, remembering, however, always, that the instinct for grave 
 color is not at all an index of a grave mind. I have had curious proof 
 of this in my own experience. When I was an entirely frivolous and 
 giddy boy, I was fondest of what seemed to me ' sublime ' in gloomy 
 art, just in proportion as I was insensible to crudeness and glare in the 
 bright colors which I enjoyed for their own sake : and the first old 
 picture I ever tried to copy was the small Rembrandt in the Louvre, 
 of the Supper at Emmaus. But now, when my inner mind is as sad as 
 it is well possible for any man's to be, and my thoughts are for the most 
 part occupied in very earnest manner, and with very grave subjects, 
 my ideal of color is that which I now assign for the standard of St. 
 George's schools, the color of sunrise, and of Angelico. 
 
 Why not, then, of the rainbow, simply ? 
 
 Practically, I must use those of the rainbow to begin with. But, for 
 standards, I give the sunrise and Angelico, because the sun and he 
 both use gold for yellow. Which is indeed an infinite gain ; if poor 
 
VII. OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLOKS. 81 
 
 drab and brown. In order to explain any of these phe- 
 nomena, I should have first to dwell on the moral sense 
 which has induced us, in ordinary language, to use the 
 metaphor of ' chastity ' for the virtue of beautifully sub- 
 dued color ; and then to explain how the chastity of Brit- 
 omart or Perdita differs from the vileness of souls that 
 despise love. But no subtle inquiries or demonstrations 
 can be admitted in writing primal laws ; nor will they 
 ever be needed, by those who obey them. The things 
 which are naturally pleasant to innocence and youth, will 
 be forever pleasant to us, both in. this life and in that 
 which is to come ; and the same law which makes the 
 babe delight in its coral, and the girl in the carnelian 
 pebble she gathers from the wet and shining beach, will 
 still rule their joy within the walls whose light shall be 
 " like a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, 
 clear as crystal. ' ' 
 
 12. These things, then, above named, without any de- 
 bate, are to be received by you as standards of color : by 
 admiration of which you may irrefragably test the right- 
 ness of your sense, and by imitation * of which you can 
 form and order all the principles of your practice. The 
 morning sky, primarily, I repeat ; and that from the 
 
 Turner bad only been able to use gold for yellow too, we had never 
 heard any vulgar jests' about him. But, in cloud-painting, nobody can 
 use gold except the sun himself, while, on angel's wings, it can but 
 barely be managed, if you have old Etruscan blood in your fingers, 
 not here, by English ones, cramped in their clutch of Indian or Cali- 
 fornian gold. 
 
 ' Imitation ' I use the word advisedly. The last and best lesson 
 I ever had in color was a vain endeavor to estimate the time which 
 Angelico must have taken to paint a small amethyst on the breast of 
 his St. Laurence. 
 
82 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 dawn onwards. There are no grays nor violets which can 
 come near the perf ectiiess of a pure dawn ; no gradations 
 of other shade can be compared with the tenderness of its 
 transitions. Dawn, with the waning inoon, (it is always 
 best so, because the keen gleam of the thin crescent shows 
 the full depth of the relative gray,) determines for you all 
 that is lovely in subdued hue and subdued light. Then 
 the passages into sunrise determine for you all that is best 
 in the utmost glory of color. Next to these, having con- 
 stant office in the pleasures of the day, come the colors of 
 the earth, and her fruits and flowers ; the iron ochres be- 
 ing the standards of homely and comfortable red, always 
 ruling the pictures of the greatest masters at Yenice, as 
 opposed to the vulgar vermilion of the Dutch ; hence 
 they have taken the general name of Venetian red : then, 
 gold itself, for standard of lustrous yellow, tempered so 
 wisely with gray in the shades ; silver, of lustrous white, 
 tempered in like manner ; marble and snow, of white 
 pure, glowing into various amber and rose under sun- 
 light : then the useful blossoms and fruits ; peach and 
 almond blossom, with the wild rose, of the paler reds ; 
 the Clarissas, of full reds, etc. ; and the fruits, of such hues 
 modified by texture or bloom. Once learn to paint a 
 peach, an apricot, and a greengage, and you have nothing 
 more to know in the modes of color enhanced by texture. 
 Corn is the standard of brown, moss of green ; and in 
 general, whatever is good for human life is also made 
 beautiful to human sight, not by " association of ideas," 
 but by appointment of God that in the bread we rightly 
 break for our lips, we shall best see the power and grace 
 of the Light he gave for our eyes. 
 
 13. The perfect order of the colors in this gentle glory 
 
VII. OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 83 
 
 is, of course, normal in the rainbow, namely, counting 
 from outside to inside, red, yellow, and blue, with their 
 combinations,* namely, scarlet, formed by yellow with 
 red ; green, formed by blue with yellow ; and purple, 
 formed by red with blue. 
 
 14. But neither in rainbow, prism, nor opal, are any of 
 these tints seen in separation. They pass into each other 
 by imperceptible gradation, nor can any entirely beautiful 
 color exist without this quality. Between each second- 
 ary, therefore, and the primaries of which it is composed, 
 there are an infinite series of tints ; inclining on one side 
 to one primary, on the other to the other ; thus green 
 passes into blue through a series of bluish greens, which 
 are of great importance in the painting of sea and sky ; 
 and it passes into yellow through a series of golden 
 greens, which are of no less importance in painting earth 
 and flowers. Now it is very tiresome to have to mix 
 names as well as colors, and always say ' bluish green,' or 
 ' reddish purple,' instead of having proper special names 
 for these intermediate tints. Practically we have such 
 names for several of them ; ' orange,' for instance, is the 
 intermediate between scarlet and yellow ; ' lilac ' one of 
 the paler tints between purple and red ; and i violet ' that 
 between purple and blue. But we .must now have our 
 code of names comj3lete ; and that we may manage 
 this more easily, we will put the colors first in their 
 places. 
 
 * Strictly speaking, the rainbow is all combination ; the primary 
 colors being only lines of transition, and the bauds consisting of scar- 
 let, green, and purple ; the scarlet being not an especially pure or agree- 
 able one in its general resultant hue on cloud-gray. The green and 
 violet are very lovely when seen over white cloud. 
 
84 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 15. Take your sixpence again ; and, with that simple 
 mathematical instrument, draw twelve circles of its size, 
 or at least as closely by its edge as you can,* on a piece 
 of Bristol board, so that you may be able to cut them out, 
 and place them variously. Then take carmine, cobalt, 
 gamboge, orange vermilion, and emerald green ; and, 
 marking the circles with the twelve first letters of the 
 alphabet, color ' a ' with pure gamboge, 4 b ' with mixed 
 gamboge and emerald green, t c ' with emerald green, 
 4 d ' with emerald green and cobalt, ' c ' with cobalt pure, 
 '/*' with two-thirds cobalt and one third carmine, 'g y 
 with equally mixed cobalt and carmine, ' h ' with two- 
 thirds carmine and one-third cobalt, i i ' with carmine 
 pure, ' j ' with carmine and vermilion, ' k ' with vermil- 
 ion, ' I ' with vermilion and gamboge. 
 
 16. But how is all this to be done smoothly and rightly, 
 and how are the thirds to be measured ? f Well, for thfe 
 
 * It is really in practice better to do this than to take compasses, 
 which are nearly sure to slip or get pinched closer, in a beginner's 
 hands, before the twelve circles are all done. But if you like to do it 
 accurately, see Fig. 17, p. 89. 
 
 f I have vainly endeavored to persuade Messrs. Wiusor and Newton 
 to prepare for me powder-colors, of which I could direct half or a 
 quarter grain to be mixed with a measured quantity of water ; but I 
 have not given up the notion. In the meantime, the firm have ar- 
 ranged at my request a beginner's box of drawing materials, namely, 
 colors, brushes, ruler, and compasses fitted with pencil-point. (As this 
 note may be read by many persons, hurriedly, who have not had time 
 to look at the first number, I allow once more, but for the last time in 
 this book, the vulgar use of the words ' pencil ' and ' brush.') The 
 working pencil and penknife should be always in the pocket, with a 
 small sketch-book, which a student of drawing should consider just as 
 necessary a part of his daily equipment as his watch or purse. Then 
 the color-box, thus composed, gives him all he wants more. For the 
 advanced student, I add the palette, with all needful mathematical in- 
 
VII. OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 85 
 
 doing of it, I must assume, that in the present artistic and 
 communicative phase of society, the pupil can, at some 
 chance opportunity, see the ordinary process of washing 
 with water-color ; or that the child in more happy cir- 
 cumstances may be allowed so to play with ' paints ' from 
 its earliest years, as to be under no particular difficulty in 
 producing a uniform stain on a piece of pasteboard. The 
 quantity of pigment to be used cannot be yet defined ; 
 the publication of these opening numbers of Fesole has 
 already been so long delayed that I want now to place 
 them in the student's hand, with what easily explicable 
 details I can give, as soon as possible ; and the plates 
 requiring care in coloring by hand, which will finally be 
 given as examples, are deferred until I can give my read- 
 ers some general idea of the system to be adopted. But, 
 for present need, I can explain all that is wanted without 
 the help of plates, by reference to flower-tints ; not that 
 the student is to be vexed by any comparisons of his work 
 with these, either in respect of brilliancy or texture : if he 
 can bring his sixpenny circles to an approximate resem- 
 blance of as many old-fashioned wafers, it is all that is 
 required of him. He will not be able to do this with 
 one coat of color ; and had better allow himself three or 
 four than permit the tints to be uneven. 
 
 17. The first tint, pure gamboge, should be brought, as 
 near as may be, up to that of the yellow daffodil, the 
 buttercup is a little too deep. In fine illumination, and 
 in the best decorative fresco painting, this color is almost 
 
 
 slrumenls and useful colors. I give 1dm colors, of finest quality, be- 
 ing content, for beginners, with what I find one of the best practical 
 colorists in England, my very dear friend Professor We stwood, has 
 found serviceable all his life,- -children's colors. 
 
86 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 exclusively represented by gold, and the student is to give 
 it, habitually, its heraldic name of ' Or. ' 
 
 The second tint, golden-green, which is continually 
 seen in the most beautiful skies of twilight, and in sun- 
 lighted trees and grass, is yet unrepresented by any flower 
 in its fulness ; but an extremely pale hue of it, in the 
 primrose, forms the most exquisite opposition, in spring, 
 to the blue of the wood-hyacinth ; and we will therefore 
 keep the name, ' Primrose,' for the hue itself. 
 
 The third tint, pure green, is, in heraldry, 'verd,' on 
 the shields of commoners, and ' Emerald ' on those of no- 
 bles. We will take for St. George's schools the higher 
 nomenclature, which is also the most intelligible and con- 
 venient ; and as we complete our color zodiac, we shall 
 thus have the primary and secondary colors named from 
 gems, and the tertiary from flowers. 
 
 18. The next following color, however, the tertiary be- 
 tween green and blue, is again not represented distinctly 
 by any flower ; but the blue of the Gentiana Yerna is so 
 associated with the pure green of Alpine pasture, and the 
 color of Alpine lakes, which is precisely the hue we now 
 want a name for, that I will call this beautiful tertiary 
 ' Lucia ; ' (that being the name given in Proserpina to 
 the entire tribe of the gentians,) and especially true to our 
 general conception of luminous power or transparency 
 in this color, which the Greeks gave to the eyes of 
 Athena. 
 
 19. The fifth color, the primary blue, heraldic * azure,' 
 or ' sapphire,' we shall always call ' Sapphire ; though, 
 in truth, the sapphire itself never readies any thing like 
 the intensity of this color, as used by the Venetian paint- 
 ers, who took for its representative pure ultramarine. But 
 
VII. OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 87 
 
 it is only seen in perfect beauty in some gradations of the 
 blue glass of the twelfth century. For ordinary purposes, 
 cobalt represents it with sufficient accuracy. 
 
 20. The sixth color, the tertiary between sapphire and 
 purple, is exactly the hue of the Greek sea, and of the 
 small Greek iris, Homer's ZOK ? commonly translated 
 ' violet. ' We will call it i Yiolet ; ' our own flower of that 
 name being more or less of the same hue, though *paler. 
 I do not know what the { syrup of violets ' was, with 
 which Ilumboldt stained his test-paper, (' Personal Narra- 
 tive,' i., p. 165,) but I am under the impression that an 
 extract of violets may be obtained which will represent 
 this color beautifully and permanently. Smalt is one of 
 its approximate hues. 
 
 21. The seventh color, the secondary purple, is the 
 deepest of all the pure colors ; it is the heraldic ' pur- 
 pure/ and 'jacinth; 5 by us always to be called 'Ja- 
 cinth. ' It is best given by the dark pansy ; see the notes 
 on that flower in the seventh number of Proserpina, 
 which will I hope soon be extant. 
 
 22. The eighth color, the tertiary between purple and 
 j-ed, corresponds accurately to the general hue and tone of 
 
 bell-heather, and will be called by us therefore ' Heath. ' 
 In various depths and modifications, of which the original 
 tint cannot be known with exactness, it forms the purple 
 ground of the most stately missals between the seventh 
 and twelfth century, such as the Psalter of Boulogne. It 
 was always, however, in these books, I doubt not, a true 
 heath-purple, not a violet. 
 
 23. The ninth color, the primary red, heraldic ' gules ' 
 and ' ruby, ' will be called by us always i Ruby. ' It is 
 not represented accurately by any stable pigment ; but 
 
88 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 crimson lake, or, better, carmine, may be used for it in 
 exercises ; and rose madder in real painting. 
 
 24. The tenth color, the tertiary between red and scar- 
 let, corresponds to the most beautiful dyes of the carna- 
 tion, and other deeper-stained varieties of the great tribe of 
 the pinks. The mountain pink, indeed, from which they 
 all are in justice named-, is of an exquisitely rich, though 
 pale, Tuby : but the intense glow of the flower leans 
 towards fiery scarlet in its crimson ; and I shall therefore 
 call this tertiary, ' Clarissa,' the name of the pink tribe in 
 Proserpina. 
 
 25. The eleventh color, the secondary scarlet, heraldic 
 6 tenny ' and ' jasper, ' is accurately represented by the 
 aluminous silicas, colored scarlet by iron, and will be by 
 us always called ' Jasper. ' 
 
 26. The twelfth color, the tertiary between scarlet and 
 gold, is most beautifully represented by the golden cro- 
 cus, being the color of the peplus of Athena. We shall 
 call it * Crocus ; ' thus naming the group of the most 
 luminous colors from the two chief families of spring 
 flowers, with gold (for the sun) between them. 
 
 This, being the brightest, had better be placed upper- 
 most in our circle, and then, taking the rest in the order 
 I have named them, we shall have our complete zodiac 
 thus arranged. (Fig. 17.*) 
 
 * If you choose to construct this figure accurately, draw first the 
 circle x y, of the size of a sixpence, and from its diameter x y, take 
 the angles max, nay, each = the sixth of the quadrant, or fifteen de- 
 grees. Draw the lines a b, a 1, each equal to x y : and 1 and b are 
 the centres of the next circles. Then the perpendiculars from m and 
 n will cut the perpendicular from a in the centre of the large circle. 
 And if you get it all to come right, I wish you joy of it. 
 
VII. OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 
 
 89 
 
 27. However rudely the young student may have colored 
 his pieces of cardboard, when he has placed them in con- 
 tact with each other in this circular order, he will at once 
 see that they form a luminous gradation, in which the up- 
 
 permost, Or, is the lightest, and the lowest, Jacinth, the 
 darkest hue. 
 
 Every one of the twelve zodiacal colors has thus a pitch of 
 intensity at which its special hue becomes clearly manifest, 
 and above which, or below which, it is not clearly recog- 
 
90 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 nized, and may, even in ordinary language, be often 
 spoken of as another color. Crimson, for instance, and 
 pink, are only tlie dark and light powers of the central 
 Clarissa, and 4 rose ' the pale power of the central Ruby. 
 A pale jacinth is scarcely ever, in ordinary terms, called 
 purple, but ' lilac. ' 
 
 28. Nevertheless, in strictness, each color is to be held 
 as extending in unbroken gradation from white to black, 
 through a series of tints, in some cases recognizable 
 throughout for the same color ; but in all the darker 
 tones of Jasper, Crocus and Or, becoming what we call 
 4 brown ; * and in the darker tints of Lucia and Primrose 
 passing into greens, to which artists have long given 
 special titles of ' Sap,' ' Olive,' ' Prussian,- and the like. 
 
 29. After we have studied the modifications of shade 
 itself, in neutral gray, we will take up the. gradated scales 
 of each color ; dividing them always into a hundred 
 degrees, between white and black ; of which the typical 
 or representative hue will be, in every one of the zodiacal 
 colors, at a different height in the scale the representa- 
 tive power of Or being approximately 20 ; of Jasper, 30 ; 
 of Ruby, 50 ; ancl of Jacinth, TO. But, for the present, 
 we must be content with much less precise ideas of hue ; 
 and begin our practice with little more than the hope of 
 arriving at some effective skill in producing the tints we 
 want, and securing some general conclusions about their 
 effects in companionship with, or opposition to, each 
 other ; the principal use of their zodiacal arrangement, 
 above given, being that each color is placed over against 
 its proper opponent ; Jacinth being the hue which most 
 perfectly relieves Or, and Primrose the most lovely oppo- 
 nent to Heath. The stamens and petals of the sweet-wil- 
 
VII. OF THE TWELVE ZODIACAL COLORS. 91 
 
 liam present the loveliest possible type of the opposition 
 of a subtle and subdued Lucia to dark Clarissa. In cen- 
 tral spring on the higher Alps, the pansy, (or, where it is 
 wanting, the purple ophryds,) with the bell gentian, and 
 pale yellow furred anemone, complete the entire chord 
 from Or to Jacinth in embroideries as rich as those of an 
 Eastern piece of precious needlework on green silk.* 
 The chord used in the best examples of glass and illumi- 
 nation is Jasper, Jacinth, and Sapphire, on ground of Or : 
 being the scarlet, purple, and blue of the Jewish Taberna- 
 cle, with its clasps and furniture of gold. 
 
 30. The best Rubrics of ecclesiastical literature are 
 founded on the opposition of Jasper to Sapphire, which 
 was the principal one in the minds of the illuminators of 
 the thirteenth century. I do not know if this choice was 
 instinctive, or scientific ; many far more beautiful might 
 have been adopted ; and I continually, and extremely, 
 regret the stern limitation of the lovely penmanship of 
 all minor lettering, for at least a hundred years through 
 the whole of literary Europe, to these two alternating 
 colors. But the fact is that these do quite centrally and 
 accurately express the main opposition of what artists call, 
 and most people feel to be truly called, warm colors as 
 opposed to cold ; pure blue being the coldest, and pure 
 scarlet the warmest, of abstract hues. 
 
 31. Into the mystery of Heat, however, as affecting 
 color-sensation, I must not permit myself yet to enter, 
 though I believe the student of illumination will be ena- 
 bled at once, by the system given in this chapter, to bring 
 his work under more consistent and helpful law than he 
 has hitherto found written for his use. My students of 
 
 * Couf. Lane's Arabian Nights, vol. i., p. 480, and vol. ii , p. 395. 
 
92 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 drawing will find the subject carried on as far as they 
 need follow, in tracing the symbolic meanings of the col- 
 ors, from the 28th to the 40th paragraph of the seventh 
 chapter of ' Deucalion ; ' (compare also i Eagle's Nest,' 
 p. 216 ;) and, without requiring, in practice, the adoption 
 of any nomenclature merely fanciful, it may yet be found 
 useful, as an aid to memory for young people, to associate 
 in their minds the order of the zodiacal colors with that of 
 the zodiacal signs. Taking Jacinth for Aries, Or will 
 very fitly be the color of Libra, and blue of Aquarius ; 
 other associations, by a little graceful and careful thought, 
 may be easily instituted between each color and its con- 
 stellation ; and the motion of the Source of Light through 
 the heavens, registered to the imagination by the beauti- 
 ful chord of his own divided rays. 
 
CHAPTER YIIL 
 
 OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 
 
 1. MY dear reader, If you have been obedient, and 
 have hitherto done all that I have told you, I trust it has 
 not been without much subdued remonstrance, and some 
 serious vexation. For I should be sorry if, when you 
 were led by the course of your study to observe closely 
 such things as are beautiful in color, (feathers, and the 
 like, not to say rocks and clouds,*) you had not long to 
 paint them, and felt considerable difficulty in complying 
 with your restriction to the use of black, or blue, or gray. 
 You ought to love color, and to think nothing quite beau- 
 tiful or perfect without it ; and if you really do love it, 
 for its own sake, and are not merely desirous to color be- 
 cause you think painting a finer thing than drawing, there 
 is some chance you may color well. Nevertheless, you 
 need not hope ever to produce any thing more than pleas- 
 ant helps to memory, or useful and suggestive sketches in 
 color, unless you mean to be wholly an artist. You may, 
 in the time which other vocations leave at your disposal, 
 produce finished, beautiful, and masterly drawings in light 
 and shade. But to color well, requires your life. It can- 
 not be (tone cheaper. The difficulty of doing right is in- 
 
 * The first four paragraphs of this chapter, this connecting paren- 
 thesis excepted, are reprinted from the ' Elements of Drawing. ' Read, 
 however, carefully, the modifying notes. 
 
94 THE LAWS OF F.ESOLE. 
 
 creased -not twofold nor threefold, but a thousandfold, 
 and more by the addition of color to your work. For 
 the chances are more than 4 thousand to one against your 
 being right both in form and color "with a given touch : it 
 is difficult enough to be right in form, if you attend to 
 that only ; but when you have to attend, at the same mo- 
 ment, to a much more subtle thing" than the form, the diffi- 
 culty is strangely increased ; and multiplied almost to in- 
 finity by this great fact, that, while form is absolute, so 
 that you can say at the moment you draw any line that it 
 is either right or wrong, color is ( wholly ) relative.* Every 
 hue throughout your work is altered by every touch that 
 you add in other places ; so that what was warmf a min- 
 ute ago, becomes cold when you have put a hotter color in 
 another place ; and what w r as in harmony when yoa left 
 it, becomes discordant as you set other colors beside it : 
 so that every touch must be laid, not with a view to its 
 effect at the time, but its effect in futurity, the result upon 
 
 * No, not ' wholly ' by any means This is one of the over-hasty 
 statements which render it impossible for me to republish, without 
 more correction than they are worth, the books I wrote before the year 
 1860. Color is no less positive than line, considered as a representation 
 of fact ; and you either match a given color, or do not, as you either 
 draw a given ellipse or square, or do not. Nor, on the other hand, 
 are lines, in their grouping, destitute of relative influence ; they exalt 
 or depress their individual powers by association ; and the necessity 
 for the correction of the above passage in this respect was pointed out 
 to me by Miss Hill, many and many a year ago, when she was using 
 the Elements in teaching design for glass. But the influence of lines 
 on each other is restricted within narrow limits, while the sequences 
 of color are like those of sound, and susceptible of all the complexity 
 and passion of the most accomplished music. 
 
 f I assumed in the ' Elements of Drawing ' the reader's acquaintance 
 with this and other ordinary terms of art. But see 30 of the last 
 chapter. 
 
VIII. OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 95 
 
 it of all that is afterwards to be done being previously con- 
 sidered. You may easily understand that, this being so, 
 nothing but the devotion of life, and great genius besides, 
 can make a colorist. 
 
 2. But though you cannot produce finished colored 
 drawings of any value, you may give yourself much pleas- 
 ure, and be of great use to other people, by occasionally 
 sketching with a view to color only ; and preserving dis- 
 tinct statements of certain color facts as that the harvest- 
 moon at rising was of such and such a red, and surrounded 
 by clouds of such and such a rosy gray ; that the moun- 
 tains at evening were, in truth, so deep in purple ; and the 
 waves by the boat's side were indeed of that incredible 
 green. This only, observe, if you have an eye for color ; 
 but you may presume that you have this, if you enjoy color. 
 
 3. And, though of course you should always give as 
 much form to your subject as your attention to its color 
 will admit of, remember that the whole value of what you 
 are about depends, in a colored sketch, on the color merely. 
 If the color is wrong, every thing is wrong : just as, if 
 you are singing, and sing false notes, it does not jnatter 
 how true the words are. If you sing at all, you must sing 
 sweetly ; and if you color at all, you must color rightly. 
 Give up all the form, rather than the slightest part of the 
 color : just as, if you felt yourself in danger of a false 
 note, you would give up the word and sing a meaningless 
 sound, if you felt that so you could save the note. Never 
 mind though your houses are all tumbling down, though 
 your clouds are mere blots, and your trees mere knobs, 
 and your sun and moon like crooked sixpences, so only 
 that trees, clouds, houses, and sun or moon, are of the 
 right colors. 
 
96 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 4. Of course, the collateral discipline to which you are 
 submitting (if you are) will soon enable you to hint 
 something, of form, even in the fastest sweep of the brush ; 
 but do not let the thought of form hamper you in the 
 least, when you begin to make colored memoranda. If 
 you want the form of the subject, draw it in black and 
 white. If you want its color, take its color, and be sure 
 you have it ; and not a spurious, treacherous, half -measured 
 piece of mutual concession, with the colors all wrong, and 
 the forms still any thing but right. It is best to get into 
 the habit of considering the colored work merely as sup- 
 plementary to your other studies ; making your careful 
 drawings of the subject first, and then a colored memoran- 
 dum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful in 
 hue, and entirely minding its own business. This princi- 
 ple, however, bears chiefly on large and distant subjects ; 
 in foregrounds, and near studies, the color cannot be got 
 without a good deal of definition of form. For if you do 
 not shape the mosses on the stones accurately, you will not 
 have the right quantity of color in each bit of moss pat- 
 tern, and then none of the colors will look right ; but it 
 always simplifies the work much if you are clear as to your 
 point of aim, and satisfied, when necessary, to fail of all 
 but that. 
 
 5. Thus far I have repeated, with modification of two sen- 
 tences only, the words of my old * Elements of Drawing ;' 
 - words which I could not change to any good purpose, so 
 far as they are addressed to the modern amateur, whose 
 mind has been relaxed, as in these days of licentious pur- 
 suit of pleasurable excitement all our minds must be, more 
 or less, to the point of not being able to endure the stress 
 of wholesome and errorless labor, (errorless, I mean, of 
 
VIII. OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 97 
 
 course, only as far as care can prevent fault). But the 
 laws of Fesole address themselves to no person of such 
 temper ; they are written only for students who have the 
 fortitude to do their best ; and I am not minded any 
 more, as will be seen in next chapter, while they have 
 any store of round sixpences in their pockets, to allow 
 them to draw their Sun, Earth, or Moon like crooked ones. 
 
 6. Yet the foregoing paragraphs are to be understood 
 also in a nobler sense. They are right, and for evermore 
 right, in their clear enunciation of the necessity of being 
 true in color, as in music, note to note ; and therefore 
 also in their implied assertion of the existence of Color- 
 Law, recognizable by all colorists, as harmony is by all 
 musicians ; and capable of being so unanimously ascer- 
 tained by accurate obedience to it, that an ill-colored pic- 
 ture could be no more admitted into the gallery of any 
 rightly constituted Academy, or Society of Painters, than 
 a howling dog into a concert. 
 
 7. I say, observe, that Color- Law may be ascertained 
 by accurate obedience to it ; not by theories concerning it. 
 No musical philosophy will ever teach a girl to sing, or a 
 master to compose ; and no color-philosophy will ever 
 teach a man of science to enjoy a picture, or a dull paint- 
 er to invent one. Nor is it prudent, in early practice, 
 even to allow the mind to be influenced by its preferences 
 and fancies in color, however delicate. The first thing 
 the student has to do is to enable himself to match any 
 color when he sees it ; and the effort which he must make 
 constantly, for many a day, is simply to match the color 
 of natural objects as nearly as he can. 
 
 And since the mightiest masters in the world cannot 
 match these quite, nor any but the mightiest match them, 
 
98 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 even nearly ; the young student must be content, for 
 many and many a day, to endure his own deficiencies 
 with resolute patience, and lose no time in hopeless efforts 
 to rival what is admirable in art, or copy what is inimita- 
 ble in nature. 
 
 8. And especially, he must for a long time abstain from 
 attaching too much importance to the beautiful mystery 
 by which the blended colors of objects seen at some dis- 
 tance charm the eye inexplicably. The day before yester- 
 day, as I was resting in the garden, the declining sun- 
 shine touched just the points of the withered snapdragons 
 on its wall. They never had been any thing very bril- 
 liant in the way of snapdragons, and were, when one 
 looked at them close, only wasted and much pitiable ruins 
 of snapdragons ; but this Enid-like tenderness of their 
 fading gray, mixed with what remnant of glow they 
 coidd yet raise into the rosy sunbeams, made them, at a 
 little distance, beautiful beyond all that pencil could ever 
 follow. But you are not to concern yourself with such 
 snapdragons yet, nor for a long while yet. 
 
 Attempt at first to color nothing but what is well within 
 sight, and approximately copiable ; but take a group of 
 objects always, not a single one ; outline them with the 
 utmost possible accuracy, with the lead ; and then paint 
 each of its own color, with such light and shade as you 
 can see in it, and produce, in the first wash, as the light 
 and shade is produced in Plate VI., never retouching. 
 This law will compel you to look well what the color is, 
 before you stain the paper with any : it will lead you, 
 through that attention, daily into more precision of eye, 
 and make all your experience gainful and definite. 
 
 9. Unless you are very sure that the shadow is indeed 
 
VIII. OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 99 
 
 of some different color from the light, shade simply with 
 a deeper, and if you already know what the word means, 
 a warmer, tone of the color you are using. Darken, for 
 instance, or with crocus, ruby with clarissa, heath with 
 ruby ; and, generally, any color whatever with the one 
 next to it, between it and the jasper. And in all mixed 
 colors make the shade of them slightly more vivid in hue 
 than the light, unless you assuredly see it in nature to be 
 less so. But for a long time, do not trouble yourself 
 much with these more subtle matters ; and attend only to 
 the three vital businesses ; approximate matching of the 
 main color in the light, perfect limitation of it by the 
 outline, and flat, flawless laying of it over all the space 
 within. 
 
 10. For instance, I have opposite me, by chance, at this 
 moment, a pale brown cane-bottomed chair, set against a 
 pale greenish wall-paper. The front legs of the chair are 
 round ; the back ones, something between round and 
 square ; and the cross-bar of the back, flat in its own sec- 
 tion, but bent into a curve. 
 
 To represent these roundings, squarings, and flattenings 
 completely, with all the tints of brown and gray involved 
 in them, would take a forenoon's work, to little profit. 
 But to outline the entire chair with extreme precision, 
 and then tint it with two well-chosen colors, one for the 
 brown wood, the other for the yellow cane, completing it, 
 part by part, with gradation, such as could be commanded 
 in the wet color ; and then to lay the green of the wall 
 behind, into the spaces left, fitting edge to edge without 
 a flaw or an overlapping, would be progressive exercise of 
 the best possible kind. 
 
 Again, on another chair beside me there is a heap of 
 
100 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 books, as the maid lias chanced to leave them, lifting 
 them off the table when she brought my breakfast. It is 
 not by any means a pretty or picturesque group ; but 
 there are no railroad-stall bindings in it, there are one 
 or two of old vellum, and .some sober browns and greens, 
 and a bit of red ; and, altogether, much more variety of 
 color than anybody but an old Venetian could paint 
 rightty. But if you see* any day such a pleasantly in- 
 considerate heap of old books, then outline them with per- 
 fect precision, and then paint each of its own color at 
 once, to the best of your power, completely finishing that 
 particular book, as far as you mean to finish it,f before 
 you touch the white paper with the slightest tint of the 
 next, you will have gone much farther than at present 
 you can fancy any idea, towards gaining the power of 
 painting a Lombard tower, or a Savoyard precipice, in 
 the right way also, that is to say, joint by joint, and tier 
 by tier. 
 
 11. One great advantage of such practice is in the ne- 
 cessity of getting the color quite even, that it may fit with 
 precision, and yet without any hard line, to the piece next 
 laid on. If there has been the least too much in the 
 brush, it of course clogs and curdles at the edge, whereas 
 it ought to be at the edge just what it is at the middle, 
 and to end there, whatever its outline may be, as 
 Well, as you see it does end, if you look, in the thing you 
 are painting. Hardness, so called, and myriads of other 
 
 * You had better ' see ' or find, than construct them ; else they will 
 alwa^ys have a constructed look, somehow. 
 
 f The drawing of the lines that show the edges of the leaves, or, in 
 the last example, of the interlacing in the cane of the chair, is entirely 
 a subsequent process, not here contemplated. 
 

 L 
 
VIII. OF THE DELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 101 
 
 nameless faults, are all traceable, ultimately, to mere 
 want of power or attention in keeping tints quiet at their 
 boundary. 
 
 12. Quiet and therefore keen ; for with this boundary 
 of them, ultimately, you are to draw, and not with a black- 
 lead outline ; so that the power of the crags on the far- 
 away mountain crest, and the beauty of the fairest saint 
 that stoops from heaven, will depend, for true image of 
 them, utterly on the last line that your pencil traces with 
 the edge of its color, true as an arrow, and light as the 
 air. In the meantime, trust me, every thing depends on 
 the lead outlines being clear and sufficient. After my 
 own forty years' experience, I find nearly all difficulties 
 resolve themselves at last into the want of more perfect 
 outline : so -that I say to myself before any beautiful 
 scene, Alas, if only I had the outline of that, what a 
 lovely thing I would make of it in an hour or two ! But 
 then the outline would take, for the sort of things I want 
 to draw, not an hour, but a year, or two ! 
 
 13. Yet you need not fear getting yourself into a like 
 discomfort by taking my counsel. This sorrow of mine 
 is because I want to paint Rouen Cathedral, or St. Mark's," 
 or a whole German tow r n with all the tiles on the roofs, 
 that one might know against what kind of multitude 
 Luther threw his defiance. If you will be moderate in 
 your desires as to subject, you need not fear the oppres- 
 siveness of the method ; fear it, however, as you may, I 
 tell you positively it is the only method by which you 
 can ever force the Fates to grant you good success. 
 
 14. The opposite plate, VII. , will give you an idea of the 
 average quantity of lines which Turner used in any land- 
 scape sketch in his great middle time, whether he meant 
 
102 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 to color it or not. He made at least a hundred sketches 
 of this kind for one that he touched with color : nor is it 
 ever possible to distinguish any difference in manner be- 
 tween outlines (on white paper) intended for color, or 
 only for notation : in every case, the outline is as perfect 
 as his time admits ; and in his earlier days, if his leisure 
 does not admit of its perfection, it is not touched with 
 color at all. In later life, when, as he afterwards said of 
 himself, in woful repentance, " he wanted to draw every 
 thing," both the lead outline and the color dash became 
 slight enough, but never inattentive ; nor did the lead 
 outline ever lose its governing proportion to all subse- 
 quent work. 
 
 15. And now, of this outline, you must observe three 
 things. First, touching its subject ; that the scene was 
 worth drawing at all, only for its human interest ; and 
 that this charm of inhabitation was always first in Tur- 
 ner's mind. If he had only wanted what vulgar artists 
 think picturesque, he might have found, in such an Eng- 
 lish valley as this, any quantity of old tree-trunks, of 
 young tree-branches, of lilied pools in the brook, and of 
 grouped cattle in the meadows. For no such mere pic- 
 ture-material he cares ; his time is given to seize and show 
 the total history and character of the spot, and all that the 
 people of England had made of it, and become in it. 
 There is the ruined piece of thirteenth-century abbey ; 
 the rector's house beside it ;* the gate-posts of the squire's 
 avenue above ; the steep fourteenth or fifteenth-century 
 bridge over the stream ; the low-roofed, square- towered 
 
 * Compare, if by chance you come across the book, the analysis of 
 the design of Turner's drawing of * Heysham ' in my old ' Elements of 
 Drawing,' page 325. 
 
VIII. OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 103 
 
 village church on the lull ; two or three of the village 
 houses and outhouses traced on the left, omitting, that 
 these may be intelligible, the " row of old trees," which, 
 nevertheless, as a part, and a principal part, of the land- 
 scape, are noted, by inscription, below ; and will be as- 
 suredly there, if ever he takes up the subject for complete 
 painting ; as also the tall group of i ash ' on the right, of 
 which he is content at present merely to indicate the 
 place, and the lightness. 
 
 16. Do not carry this principle of looking for signs of 
 human life or character, any more than you carry any 
 other principle, to the point of affectation. Whatever 
 pleases and satisfies you for the present, may be wisely 
 drawn ; but remember always that the beauty of any nat- 
 ural object is relative to the creatures it has to please ; 
 and that the pleasure of these is in proportion to their 
 reverence and their understanding. There can be no nat- 
 ural ' phenomena ' without the beings to whom they are 
 ' phenomenal ' (or, in plainer English, things cannot be ap- 
 parent without some one to whom they may appear), and 
 the final definition of Beauty is, the power in any thing 
 of delighting an intelligent* human soul by its appearance, 
 power given to it by the Maker of Souls. The perfect 
 beauty of Man is summed in the Arabian exclamation, 
 " Praise be to Him who created thee !" and the perfect 
 beauty of all natural things summed in the Angel's prom- 
 ise, " Goodwill towards men." 
 
 17. In the second place, observe, in this outline, that 
 no part of it is darker or lighter than any other, except 
 in the moment of ceasing or disappearing. As the edge 
 becomes less and less visible to the eye, Turner's pencil 
 line fades, and vanishes where also the natural outline 
 
104 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 vanished. But he does not draw his ash trees in the fore- 
 ground with a darker line than the woods in the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 This is a great and constant law. Whether your out- 
 line be gray or black, fine or coarse, it is to \>e equal every- 
 where. Always conventional, it is to be sustained through- 
 out in the frankness of its conventionalism ; it no more 
 exists in nature as a visible line, at the edge of a rose leaf 
 near, than of a ridge of hills far away. .Never try to ex- 
 press more by it than the limitation of forms ; it has 
 nothing to do with their shadows, or their distances. 
 
 18. Lastly, observe of this Turner outline, there are 
 some conditions of rapid grace in it, and others of con- 
 structive effect by the mere placing of broken lines in rel- 
 ative groups, which, in the first place, can be but poorly 
 rendered even by the engraver's most painstaking fac- 
 simile ; and, in the second, cannot be attained in practice 
 but after many years spent in familiar use of the pencil. 
 I have therefore given you this plate, not so much for an 
 immediate model, as to show you the importance of out- 
 line even to a painter whose chief virtue and skill seemed, 
 in his finished works, to consist in losing it. How little 
 this was so in reality, you can only know by prolonged 
 attention, not only to his drawings, but to the natural 
 forms they represent. 
 
 19. For there were current universally during Turner's 
 lifetime,* and there are still current very commonly, two 
 
 * I conclude the present chapter with the statement given in the 
 catalogue I prepared to accompany the first exhibition of his works at 
 Marl borough House, in the year 1857 , because it illustrates some 
 points in water-color work, respecting which the student's mind may 
 advisedly be set at rest bctore further procedure. I have also left the 
 17th paragraph without qualification, on account of its great iinpor- 
 
PEN OUTLINE WIT H ADVANCED SHADE. 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing. Plate VIII. 
 
VIII. OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 105 
 
 great errors concerning him ; errors which not merely 
 lose sight of the facts, but which are point-blank contra- 
 dictory of the facts. It was thought that he painted 
 chiefly from imagination, when his peculiar character, as 
 distinguished from all other artists, was in always draw- 
 ing from memories of seen fact. And it was commonly 
 thought that he was great only in coloring, and could not 
 draw ; whereas, his eminent distinction above other art- 
 ists, so far as regards execution, was in his marvellous 
 precision of graphic touch, disciplined by practice of en- 
 graving, and by life-long work with the hard lead pencil- 
 point on white paper. 
 
 20. Now there are many truths respecting art which 
 cannot be rightly stated without involving an appearance 
 of contradiction ; and those truths are commonly the most 
 important. There are, indeed, very few truths in any sci- 
 ence which can be fully stated without such an expres- 
 sion of their opposite sides, as looks, to a person who has 
 not grasp of the subject enough to take in both the sides 
 at once, like contradiction. This law holds down even to 
 very small minutiae in the physical sciences. For in- 
 stance, a person ignorant of chemistry hearing it stated, 
 perhaps consecutively, of hydrogen gas, that it was " in 
 a high degree combustible," and "a non-supporter of 
 combustion," would probably think the lecturer or writer 
 was a fool ; and when the statement thus made embraces 
 wide fields of difficult investigation on both sides, its final 
 terms invariably appear contradictory to a person who has 
 but a narrow acquaintance with the matter in hand. 
 
 tance ; but the student must be careful in reading it to distinguish be- 
 tween true outline, and a linear basis for future shadow, as in Plate 
 VIII. , which I put here for immediate reference. 
 
108 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 employed by inferior water-color painters. Many tradi- 
 tions indeed are afloat in the world of art respecting extra- 
 ordinary processes through which he carried his work in 
 its earlier stages ; and I think it probable that, in some of 
 his elaborately completed drawings, textures were pre- 
 pared, by various mechanical means, over the general sur- 
 face of the paper, before the drawing of detail was begun. 
 Also, in the large drawings of early date, the usual expedi- 
 ents of sponging and taking out color by friction have 
 often been employed by him ; Lut it appears only experi- 
 mentally, and that the final rejection of all such expedi- 
 ents was the result of their trial ; for in all the rest of the 
 national collection the evidence is as clear as it is copious 
 that he went straight to his mark ; in early days finishing 
 piece by piece on the white paper ; and, as he advanced 
 in skill, laying the main masses in broad tints, and work- 
 ing the details over these : never effacing or sponging, 
 but taking every advantage of the wetness of the color, 
 when first laid, to bring out soft lights with the point of 
 the brush, or scratch out bright ones with the end of the 
 stick, so driving the wet color in a dark line to the edge 
 of the light, a very favorite mode of execution with 
 him, for three reasons : that it at once gave a dark edge, 
 and therefore full relief, to the piece of light ; secondly, 
 that it admitted of firm and angular drawing of forms ; 
 and, lastly, that as little color was removed from the 
 whole mass (the quantity taken from the light being only 
 driven into the dark), the quantity of hue in the mass it- 
 self, as broadly laid, in its first membership with other 
 masses, was not much affected by the detailing process. 
 
 25. When these primary modifications of the wet color 
 had been obtained, the drawing was proceeded with, ex- 
 
VIII. OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. 109 
 
 actly in the manner of "William Hunt, of the old Water- 
 color Society, (if worked in transparent hues,) or of John 
 Lewis, if iri opaque, that is to say, with clear, firm, and 
 unalterable touches one over another, or one into the in- 
 sterstices of another ; NEVER disturbing them by any gen- 
 eral wash ; using friction only where roughness of surface 
 was locally required to produce effects of granulated 
 stone, mossy ground, and such like ; a.nd rarely even tak- 
 ing out minute lights, but leaving them from the first, 
 and working round and ' up to them ; very frequently 
 drawing thin, dark outlines merely by putting a little 
 more water into the wet touches, so as to drive the color 
 to the edge as it dried ; the only difference between his 
 manipulation and William Hunt's being in his inconceiva- 
 bly varied and dexterous use of expedients of this kind, 
 such, for instance, as drawing the broken edge of a cloud 
 merely by a modulated dash of the brash, defining the 
 perfect forms with a quiver of his hand ; rounding them 
 by laying a little more color into one part of the dash be- 
 fore it dried, and laying the warm touches of the light 
 after it had dried, outside of the edges. In many cases, 
 the instantaneous manipulation is quite inexplicable. 
 
 26. It is quite possible, however, that, even in the most 
 advanced stages of some of the finished drawings, they 
 may have been damped, or even fairly put under water, 
 and wetted through ; nay, they may even have been ex- 
 posed to strong currents of water, so as to remove super- 
 fluous color without defiling the tints anywhere ; only 
 most assuredly they never received any friction such as 
 would confuse or destroy the edges and purity of separate 
 tints. And all I can assert is, that in the national collec- 
 tion there is no evidence of any such processes. In the 
 
110 . THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 plurality of the drawings the evidence is, on the con- 
 trary, absolute, that nothing of the kind has taken place ; 
 the greater number being executed on leaves of books, 
 neither stretched nor moistened in any way whatever ; or 
 eke on little bits of gray paper, often folded in four, and 
 as often with the colored drawings made on ~both sides of a 
 leaf. The coarser vignettes are painted on sheets of thin 
 drawing-paper ; the finer ones on smooth cardboard, of 
 course without washing or disturbing the edges, of which 
 the perfect purity is essential to the effect of the vignette. 
 
 27. I insist on this point at greater length, because, so 
 far as the direct copying of Turner's drawings can be use- 
 ful to the student (working from nature with Turner's 
 faithfulness being the essential part of "his business), it 
 will be so chiefly as compelling him to a decisive and 
 straightforward execution. 1 observed that in the former 
 exhibition the students generally selected those drawings 
 for study which could be approximately imitated by the 
 erroneous processes of modern water color ; and which 
 were therefore exactly those that showed them least of 
 Turner's mind, and taught them least of his methods. 
 
 The best practice, and the most rapid appreciation of 
 Turner, will be obtained by accurately copying his 
 sketches in body color on gray paper ; and when once the 
 method is understood, and the resolution made to hold by 
 it, the student will soon h'nd that the advantage gained is 
 in more directions than one. For tBe sum of work which 
 he can do will be as much greater in proportion to his de- 
 cision, as it will be in each case better, and, after the first 
 efforts, more easily done. He may have been appalled by 
 the quantity which he sees that Turner accomplished ; but 
 he will be encouraged when he finds how much any one 
 
VIII. OF THE RELATION OF COLOR TO OUTLINE. Ill 
 
 may accomplish who does not hesitate, nor repent. An 
 artist's nerve and power of mind are lost chiefly in decid- 
 ing what to do, and in effacing what he has done : it is 
 anxiety, not labor, that fatigues him ; and vacillation, not 
 difficulty, that hinders him. And if the student feels 
 doubt respecting his own decision of inind, and questions 
 the possibility of gaining the habit of it, let him be as- 
 sured that in art, as in life, it depends mainly on sim- 
 plicity of purpose. Turner's decision came chiefly of his 
 truthfulness ; it was because he meant always to be true, 
 that he was able always to be bold. And you will find 
 that you may gain his courage, if you will maintain his 
 fidelity. If you want only to make your drawing fine, or 
 attractive, you may hesitate indeed, long and often, to 
 consider whether your faults will be forgiven, or your 
 fineries perceived. But if you want to put fair fact into 
 it, you will find the fact shape it fairly for you ; and that 
 in pictures, no less than in human life, they who have 
 once made up their minds to do right, will have little 
 place for hesitation, and little cause for repentance. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 1. OF all the principles of Art which it has been my 
 endeavor throughout life to inculcate, none are so impor- 
 tant, and few so certain, as that which modern artists have 
 chiefly denied, that Art is only in her right place and 
 office when she is subordinate to use ; that her duty is 
 always to teach, though to teach pleasantly ; and that she 
 is shamed, not exalted, when she has only graces to dis- 
 play, instead of truths to declare. 
 
 2. I do not know if the Art of Poetry has ever been 
 really advanced by the exercise of youth in writing non- 
 sense verses ; but I know that the Art of Painting will 
 never be so, by the practice of drawing nonsense lines ; 
 and that not only it is easy to make every moment of time 
 spent 111 the elementary exercises of Art serviceable in 
 other directions ; but also it will be found that the exer- 
 cises which are directed most clearly to the acquisition of 
 general knowledge, will be swiftest in their discipline of 
 manual skill, and most decisive in their effect on the for- 
 mation of taste. 
 
 3. It will be seen, in the sequel of the Laws of Fesole, 
 that every exercise in the book has the ulterior object of 
 fixing in the student's mind some piece of accurate knowl-. 
 edge, either in geology, botany, or the natural history o* 
 animals. The laws which regulate the delineation o 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 113 
 
 these, are still more stern in their application to the 
 higher branches of the arts concerned with the history of 
 the life, and symbolism of the thoughts, of Man ; but the 
 general student may more easily learn, and at first more 
 profitably obey them, in their gentler authority over in- 
 ferior subjects. 
 
 4. The beginning of all useful applications of the 
 graphic art is of course in the determination of clear and 
 beautiful forms for letters ; but this beginning has been 
 invested by the illuminator with so many attractions, and 
 permits so dangerous a liberty to the fancy, that I pass by 
 it, at first, to the graver and stricter work of geography. 
 For our most serviceable practice of which, some modifi- 
 cations appear to me desirable in existing modes of globe 
 measurement : these I must explain in the outset, and re- 
 quest the student to familiarize himself with them com- 
 pletely before going farther. 
 
 5. On our ordinary globes the 360 degrees of the equa- 
 tor are divided into twenty-four equal spaces, representing 
 the distance through which any point of the equator 
 passes in an hour of the day : each space therefore con- 
 sisting of fifteen degrees. 
 
 This division will be retained in St. George's schools ; 
 but it appears to me desirable to give the student a more 
 clear and consistent notion of the length of a degree than 
 he is likely to obtain under our present system of instruc- 
 tion. I find, for instance, in the Atlas published under 
 the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of 
 Useful Knowledge,* that, in England and Ireland, a de- 
 
 * The larger Atlas is without date : the selection of maps issued for 
 the use of Harrow School in 1856 is not less liberal in its views respect- 
 ing the length of a degree. 
 
114: THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 gree contains 69.14 English miles ; in Russia, 69., 15 ; in 
 Scotland, 69.1 ; in Italy, 69 fin Turkey, 68.95 ; and in 
 India 68.8. In Black's more elaborate Atlas, the degree 
 at the equator is given as 69.6, whether of longitude or 
 latitude, with a delicate scale of diminution in the degrees 
 of latitude to the pole, of which the first terms Avould 
 quite fatally confuse themselves in a young student's mind 
 with the wavering estimates given, as above quoted, in 
 more elementary publications. 
 
 6. Under these circumstances, since in the form of the 
 artificial globe we ignore the polar flatness of it, I shall 
 also ignore it in practical measurement ; and estimate the 
 degrees of longitude at the equator, and of latitude every- 
 where, as always divided into Italian miles, one to the 
 minute, sixty to the degree. The entire circumference of 
 the earth at the equator will thus be estimated at 21,600 
 miles ; any place on the equator having diurnal motion at 
 the rate of 900 miles an hour. The reduction, after- 
 wards, of any required distance into English miles, or 
 French kilometres, will be easy arithmetic. 
 
 7. The twenty-four meridians drawn on our common 
 globes will be retained on St. George's ; but numbered 
 consecutively round the globe, 1 to 24, from west to east. 
 The first meridian will be that through Fesole, and called 
 Galileo's line ; the second, that approximately through 
 Troy,* called the Ida line. The sixth, through the east- 
 ern edge of India, will be called ' the Orient line ; ' the 
 eighteenth, through the Isthmus of Vera Cruz, ' the Occi- 
 dent line ; ' and the twenty-fourth, passing nearly with 
 
 * Accurately, it passes through Tenedos, thus dividing the Ida of 
 Zeus from the Ida of Poseidon in Samothraee. See ' Eothen,' Chap 
 ter IV. ; and Dr. Schliemann's Troy, Plate IV. 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 115 
 
 precision, through our English Devonport, and over Dart- 
 moor, ' the Devon line. ' Its opposite meridian, the 
 twelfth, through mid-Pacific, will be called the Captains' 
 line. 
 
 8. The meridians on ordinary globes are divided into 
 lengths of ten degrees, by eight circles drawn between the 
 equator and each of the poles. But I think this numera- 
 tion confusing to the student, by its inconsistency with 
 the divisions of the equator, and its multiplication of lines 
 parallel to the Arctic and Tropic circles. On our St. 
 George's globes, therefore, the divisions of latitude will 
 be, as those of longitude, each fifteen degrees, indicated 
 by five circles drawn between each pole and the equator. 
 
 Calling the equator by its own name, the other circles 
 will be numbered consecutively north and south ; and 
 called 1st, 2nd, etc., to the 5th, which will be that nearest 
 the Pole. The first north circle will be found to pass 
 through the Cape-de-Verde island of St. Jago ; the sec- 
 ond north circle will be the line of latitude on our pres- 
 ent globes passing approximately through Cairo ; the 
 third will as nearly run through Venice ; the fourth, 
 almost with precision, through Christiania ; and the fifth 
 through Cape Fern, in JSTova Zembla. I wish my stu- 
 dents to call these circles, severally, the St. James's cir- 
 cle, the Arabian circle, the Venetian circle, the Christian 
 circle, and the Fern circle. On the southern hemisphere, 
 I shall call the first circle St. John's ; thus enclosing the 
 most glowing space of the tropics between the lines named 
 from the two Sons of Thunder ; the Natal circle will 
 divide intelligibly the eastern coast of Africa, and pre- 
 serve the title of an entirely true and noble, therefore 
 necessarily much persecuted, Christian Bishop ; the St. 
 
116 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 George's circle, opposite the Venetian, will mark the 
 mid-quadrant, reminding the student, also, that in far 
 South America there is a Gulf of St. George ; the Thule 
 circle will pass close south of the Southern Thule ; and 
 the Blanche circle (ligne Blanche, for French children), 
 
 include, with Mounts Erebus and Terror, the supposed 
 glacial space of the great Antarctic continent. 
 
 9. By this division of the meridians, the student, be- 
 sides obtaining geographical tenure in symmetrical clear- 
 ness, will be familiarized with the primary division of the 
 circle by its radius into arcs of 60, and with the subdivis- 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 117 
 
 ions of such arcs. And lie will observe that if he draws 
 his circle representing the world with a radius of two 
 inches, (in Figure 18, that it may come within my type, 
 it is only an inch and a half,) lettering the Equator Q R, 
 the North Pole P, the South Sole s, and the centre of the 
 circle, representing that of the Earth, o ; then complet- 
 ing the internal hexagon and dodecagon, and lettering the 
 points through which the Arabian and Christian circles 
 pass, respectively A and c, since the chord Q c equals the 
 radius Q o, it will also measure two inches, and the arc 
 upon it, Q A c, somewhat more than two inches, so that 
 the entire circle will be rather more than a foot round. 
 
 10. Now I want some enterprising map-seller * to pre- 
 pare some school-globes, accurately of such dimension that 
 the twenty-four-sided figure enclosed in. their circle may 
 be exactly half an inch in the side ; and therefore the 
 twenty-four meridians and eleven circles of latitude drawn 
 on it with accurately horizontal intervals of half an inch 
 between each of the meridians at the equator, and be- 
 tween the circles everywhere. 
 
 And, on this globe, I want the map of thevvvorld en- 
 graved in firm and simple outline, with the principal 
 mountain chains ; but no rivers, f and no names of any 
 country ; and this nameless chart of the world is to be 
 colored, within the Arctic circles, the sea pale sapphire, 
 and the land white ; in the temperate zones, the sea full 
 
 * I cannot be answerable, at present, for what such enterprise may 
 produce. I will see to it when I have finished my book, if I am 
 spared to do so. 
 
 f My reason for this refusal is that I want children first to be made 
 to guess the courses and sizes of rivers, from the formation of the land ; 
 and also, that nothing may disturb the eyes or thoughts in fastening 
 on that formation. 
 
118 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 lucia, and the land pale emerald ; and between the tropics, 
 the sea full violet, and the land pale clarissa. 
 
 These globes I should like to see executed with ex- 
 treme fineness and beauty of line and color ; and each 
 enclosed in a perfectly strong cubic case, with silk lining. 
 And I hope that the time may come when this little globe 
 
 V, 
 
 s 
 
 FIG. 19. 
 
 may be just as necessary a gift from the parents to the 
 children, in any gentleman's family, as their shoes or bon- 
 nets. 
 
 11. In the meantime, the letters by which the circles 
 are distinguished, added, in Figure 19, to the complete 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 119 
 
 series of horizontal lines representing them, will enable 
 the student rapidly to read and learn their names from the 
 equator up and down. " St. James's, Arabian, Vene- 
 tian, Christian, Fern ; St. John's, Natal, St. George's, 
 Thule, Blanche ;" these names being recognized always 
 as belonging no less to the points in the arcs of the 
 quadrant in any drawing, than to the globe circles ; and 
 thus rendering the specification of forms more easy. In 
 such specification, however, the quadrant must always be 
 conceived as a part of the complete circle ; the lines o Q 
 and o R are always to be called ' basic : ' the letters Q p, 
 R p, Q s, and R s, are always to be retained, each for their 
 own arc of the quadrant ; and the points of division in the 
 arcs R P and R s distinguished from those in the arcs Q p 
 and Q s by small, instead of capital, letters. Thus a tri- 
 angle to be drawn with its base on St. George's circle, 
 and its apex in the North Pole, will be asked for simply 
 as the triangle G P g ; the hexagon with the long and 
 short sides, c P, PR, may be placed at any of the points by 
 describing it as the hexagon QAC, j v v, or the like; 
 and ultimately the vertical triangles on the great divis- 
 ional lines for bases will need no other definition than the 
 letters B p, T p, G P, etc. 
 
 The lines F f v v, etc. , taken as the diameters of their 
 respective circles, may be conveniently called, in any 
 geometrical figure in which they occur, the Fern line, the 
 Venetian line, etc. ; and they are magnitudes which will 
 be of great constructive importance to us, for it may be 
 easily seen, by thickening the lines of the included 
 squares, that the square on the Venetian line, the largest 
 that can be included in the circle, is half the square on the 
 equator ; the square on the Christian line, the square of 
 
120 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 the radius, is again half of that on the Venetian ; and the 
 square on the Fern line, a fifth diminishing term between 
 the square of the equator and zero. 
 
 12. Next, 1 wish my pupils each to draw for them- 
 selves the miniature hemisphere, Plate IX., Figure 1, 
 with a radius of an inch and nine-tenths, which will give 
 them approximately the twenty-four divisions of half an 
 inch each. Then, verticals are to be let fall from the 
 points j, A, etc., numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, as in Figure 
 19, and then the meridians in red, with the pencil, by 
 hand, through the points 1, 2, etc., of the figure ; observ- 
 ing that each meridian must be an elliptical, not a circu- 
 lar, arc. And now we must return, for a moment, to the 
 fifteenth paragraph of the fourth chapter, where we had 
 to quit our elliptic practice for other compass work. 
 
 13. The ellipse, as the perspective of the circle, is so 
 important a natural line that it is needful to be perfectly 
 familiar with the look of it, and perfectly at ease in the 
 tracing of it, before the student can attempt with success 
 the slightest architectural or landscape outline. Usually, 
 the drawing of the ellipse is left to gather itself gradually 
 out of perspective studies ; but thus under a disadvantage, 
 seldom conquered, that the curve at the narrow extremity, 
 which is the only important part of it, is always confused 
 with the right line enclosing the cylinder or circle to be 
 drawn ; and never therefore swept with delicacy or facil- 
 ity. I wish, the student, therefore, to conquer all hesita- 
 tion in elliptic drawing at once, by humbly constructing 
 ellipses, in sufficiently various number, large and small, 
 with two pins' heads and a thread ; and copying these 
 with the lead, first, very carefully, then fastening the lead 
 line with pencil and color. 
 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 121 
 
 This practice should be especially directed to the ex- 
 tremities of the narrow and long elliptic curves, as the 
 beauty of some of the finest architecture depends on the 
 perspective of this form in tiers of arches : while those of 
 the shores of lakes, and bending of streams, though often 
 passing into other and more subtle curves, will never be 
 possible at all until the student is at ease in this first and 
 elementary one. 
 
 14. Returning to our globe work, on the assumption 
 that the pupil will prepare for it by this more irksome 
 practice, it is to be noted that, for geographical purposes, 
 we must so far conventionalize our perspective as to sur- 
 render the modifications produced by looking at the globe 
 from near points of sight ; and assume that the perspec- 
 tives of the meridians are orthographic, as they would bo 
 if the globe were seen from an infinite distance ; and be- 
 come, practically, when it is removed to a moderate one. 
 The real perspectives of the meridians, drawn on an 
 orange six feet off, would be quite too subtle for any ordi- 
 nary draughtsmanship ; and there would be no end to the 
 intricacy of our map drawing if we were to attempt them, 
 even on a larger scale. I assume, therefore, for our map 
 work, that the globe may be represented, when the equa- 
 tor is level, with its eleven circles of latitude as horizontal 
 lines ; and the eleven visible meridians, as portions of five 
 vertical ellipses, with a central vertical line between the 
 poles. 
 
 15. When the student has completely mastered the 
 drawing, and, if it may be so called, the literature, of this 
 elementary construction, he must advance another, and a 
 great step, by drawing the globe, thus divided, with its 
 poles at any angle, and with any degree of longitude 
 brought above the point o. 
 
122 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 The placing the poles at an angle will at once throw all 
 the circles of latitude into visible perspective, like the 
 meridians, and enable us, when it may be desirable, to 
 draw both these and the meridians as on a transparent 
 globe, the arcs of them being traceable in completeness 
 from one side of the equator to the other. 
 
 16. The second figure in Plate IX. represents the 
 globe-lines placed so as to make Jerusalem the central 
 point of its visible hemisphere.* A map thus drawn, 
 whether it include the entire hemisphere or not, will in 
 future be called ' Polar ' to the place brought above the 
 point o ; and the maps which I wish my students to draw 
 of separate countries will always be constructed so as to 
 be polar to some approximately central point of chief im- 
 portance in those countries ; generally, if possible, to their 
 highest or historically most important mountain ; other- 
 wise, to their capital, or their oldest city, or the like. 
 Thus the map of the British Islands will be polar to 
 Scawfell Pikes, the highest rock in England : Switzer- 
 land will be polar to Monte Rosa, Italy to Rome, and 
 Greece to Argos. 
 
 IT. This transposition of the poles and meridians must 
 be prepared for the young pupil, and for all unacquainted 
 with the elements of mathematics, by the master : but the 
 class of students for whom this book is chiefly written 
 will be able, I think without difficulty, to understand and 
 apply for themselves the following principles of construc- 
 tion. 
 
 If P and s, Figure 20, be the poles of the globe in its 
 normal position, the line of sight being in the direction of 
 
 * The meridians in this figure are given from that of Fesole, roughly 
 taking the long, of Jerusalem 35 E., from Greenwich ; and lat. 32 N. 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 1 3 
 
 the dotted lines, tangential to the circle at p and s ; and if 
 we then, while the line of sight remains unchanged, move 
 the pole P to any point p, and therefore, (the centre of the 
 globe remaining fixed at o,) the pole s to the opposite ex- 
 tremity of the diameter, s ; and if A B be the diameter of 
 any circle of latitude on the globe thus moved, such 
 diameter being drawn between the highest and lowest 
 points of that circle of latitude in its new position, it is 
 evident that on the hemispherical surface of the globe 
 
 FIG. 20. 
 
 commanded by the eye, the declined pole P will be seen 
 at the level of the line p p ; the levels b B, a A will be the 
 upper and lower limits of the perspective arc of the given 
 circle of latitude ; the centre of that curve will be at the 
 level c c ; and its lateral diameter, however we change 
 the inclination of its vertical one, will be constant.* 
 
 * Always remembering that the point of sight is at an infinite dis- 
 tance, else the magnitude of this diameter would be affected by the 
 length of the interval c o. 
 
124 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 18. On these data, tlie following construction of a map 
 of the hemisphere to be made polar to a given place, will 
 be, I think, intelligible, or, at the very least, practica- 
 ble ; which is all that at present we require of it. 
 
 Let p and s, Figure 21, be the original poles ; let the 
 arc P Q s be the meridian of the place to which the map is 
 to be made polar ; and let x be the place itself. From x 
 draw the diameter x Y, which represents a circle to be 
 called the ' equatorial line ' of the given place ; and 
 
 which is of course inclined to the real equator at an angel 
 measured by the latitude of the place. 
 
 Through the point o, (which I need not in future 
 letter, it being in our figures always the mid-point be- 
 tween Qand R, and, theoretically, the centre of the earth,) 
 draw the line terminated by the ball and arrow-point, per- 
 pendicular to x Y. This is to be called the ' stellar lino ' 
 of the given place x. In the map made polar to x, this 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 125 
 
 line, if represented, will coincide with the meridian of x, 
 but must not be confused with that meridian in the stu- 
 dent's mind. 
 
 19. Place now the figure so as to bring the stellar line 
 vertical, indicating it well by its arrow-head and ball, 
 which on locally polar maps will point north and south for 
 the given place, Figure 22. 
 
 FIG. 22. 
 
 The equatorial line of x, (x Y,) now becomes horizontal. 
 QK is the real equator, p and s the real poles, and the 
 given place to which the map is to be made polar is at x. 
 The line of sight remains in the direction of the dotted 
 lines. 
 
 20. As the student reads, let him construct and draw 
 the figures himself carefully. There is not the smallest 
 hurry about the business, (and there must be none in any 
 
126 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 business he means to be well done) ; all that we want is 
 clear understanding, and fine drawing. And I multiply 
 my figures, not merely to make myself understood, but as 
 exercises in drawing to be successively copied. And the 
 firm printing of the letters * is a part of this practice, 
 taking the place of the more irksome exercise recom- 
 mended in my first ' Elements of Drawing, ' p. 25. Be 
 careful, also, that they shall be not only clear and neat, 
 but perfectly upright. You will draw palaces and towers 
 in truer stability after drawing letters uprightly ; and the 
 position of the letter, as, for instance, in the two last 
 figures, is often important in the construction of the 
 diagram. 
 
 21. Having fixed the relations of these main lines well 
 in his mind, the student is farther to learn these two defi- 
 nitions. 
 
 I. The l Equatorial line ' of any place is the complete 
 circle of the circumference of the world passing through 
 that place, in a plane inclined to the plane of the equator 
 at an angle measured by the degrees of the latitude of the 
 place, 
 
 II. The ' Stellar line ' of any place is a line drawn 
 through the centre of the Earth perpendicular to the 
 equatorial line of that place. It is therefore, to any such 
 equatorial line (geometrically) what the axis of the Earth 
 is to the equator ; and though it does not point to the 
 Polestar, is always in the vertical plane passing through 
 the Polestar and place for which it is drawn, f 
 
 * By a mistake of the ensrraver, the small letters, though all printed 
 by myself in. Roman form, have been changed, throughout the fig- 
 ures in this chapter, into italics. But in copying them, let them all be 
 carefully printed in Roman type. 
 
 f The Polestar is assumed, throughout all our work, to indicate the 
 true North. 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 127 
 
 22. It follows from these definitions that if we were 
 able to look down on any place from a point vertically 
 and exactly above it, and its equatorial and stellar lines 
 were then visible to us, drawn, the one round the Earth, 
 and the other through it, they would both appear as right 
 lines, forming a cross, the equatorial line running, at the 
 point of intersection, east and west ; and the stellar, north 
 and south. 
 
 23. Now all the maps which I hope to prepare for St. 
 George's schools will be constructed, not by circles of lat- 
 itude and meridians, but as squares of ten, twenty, or 
 thirty degrees in the side, quartered into four minor 
 squares of five, ten, or fifteen degrees in the side, by the 
 cross formed by the equatorial and stellar line of the place to 
 which the map is said to be i polar ; ' which place will 
 therefore be at the centre of the square. And since the 
 arc of a degree on the equatorial line is as long as the arc 
 of a degree on the equator, and since the stellar line of a 
 place on a polar map coincides with the meridian of that 
 place, the measurements of distance along each of the four 
 arms of the cross will be similar, and the enlargements 
 of terrestrial distance expressed by them, in equal propor- 
 tions. 
 
 24. I am obliged to introduce the terms " at the point 
 of intersection, " in 22, because, beyond the exact point 
 of intersection, the equatorial line does not run east and 
 west, in the ordinary geographical sense. Note therefore 
 the following conditions separating this from the usually 
 drawn terrestrial lines. 
 
 If, from the eastern and western gates of a city, two 
 travellers set forth to walk, one due east, and the other 
 due west, they would meet face to face after they had 
 
128 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 walked each the semicircle of the earth-line in their city's 
 latitude. 
 
 But if from the eastern and western gates they set forth 
 to walk along their city's equatorial line, they would only 
 meet face to face after they had each walked the full 
 semicircle of the Earth's circumference. 
 
 And if, from the eastern and western gates of their city, 
 they were able to set forth, to walk along the lines used as 
 lines of measurement on its polar map, they would meet no 
 more forever. 
 
 For these lines, though coinciding, the one with its 
 meridian, and the other with its equatorial line, are con- 
 ceived always as lines drawn in the air, so as to touch the 
 Earth only at the place itself, as the threads of a common 
 squaring frame would touch the surface of a globe ; that 
 which coincides with the Stellar line being produced in- 
 finitely in the vertical plane of the Polestar, and that 
 which coincides with the equatorial line produced infi- 
 nitely at right angles to it in the direction of the minor 
 axis of the Earth's orbit. 
 
 25. In which orbit, calling the point of winter solstice, 
 being that nearest the Polestar, the North point of the 
 orbit, and that of the summer solstice South, the point 
 of vernal equinox will be West, the point of autumnal 
 equinox East ; and the polar map of any place will be in 
 general constructed and shaded with the Earth in' vernal 
 equinox, and the place at the time of sunrise to it on 
 Easter Day, supposing the sun ten degrees above the hori- 
 zon, and expressing therefore the heights of the moun- 
 tain ehains accurately by the length of their shadows. 
 
 26. Therefore, in now proceeding to draw our polar 
 map for the given place x, Figure 22, we have to bring 
 
IX. OF MAP DKAWING. 
 
 129 
 
 the two poles, and the place itself, to the meridian which 
 coincides, in our circular construction, with the stellar 
 line. Accordingly, having got our construction as in Fig 
 ure 22, we let fall perpendiculars on the stellar line from 
 all the four points P, s, Q, and E, Figure 23, giving us 
 the four points on the stellar line p, s, q, and r. 
 
 Then, in our polar map, p and s are the new poles cor- 
 responding to P and s ; q and r the new points of the 
 
 FIG. 23. 
 
 Equator corresponding to Q and E ; and the place to 
 which the map is polar, x, will now be in the centre of 
 the map at the point usually lettered o. 
 
 27. Now this construction is entirely general, and the 
 two zigzags, p P s s and r E Q q, must always be drawn in 
 the same way for the poles and any given circle of lati- 
 tude, as well as for the Equator ; only if the more 
 lightly-drawn zigzag be for a north or south circle of lati- 
 
130 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 tude, it will not be symmetrical on both sides of the line 
 x Y. Therefore, removing the (for the moment unneces- 
 sary) line x Y from the construction, and drawing, instead 
 of the Equator Q K, any circle of latitude L M, 1 and m 
 are the corresponding points of that circle in our polar 
 map, and we get the entirely general construction, Figure 
 24, in which the place to which the map is polar, being 
 now at the centre of the circle, is lettered x, because it is 
 
 FIG. 24 
 
 not now the centre of the earth between Q and R, but the 
 point x, on the surface of the earth, brought round to co- 
 incide with it. 
 
 28. And now I should like the student to fix the letters 
 attached to these constructions in his mind, as belonging, 
 not only to their respective circles, but always to the same 
 points in these circles. Thus the letter x will hencefor- 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 131 
 
 ward, after we have once finished the explanatory con- 
 struction in the present chapter, always signify the point 
 to which the map is polar, and Y its exactly antipodal 
 point on the earth's surface, half round the equatorial 
 line. If we have to speak in more detail of the equato- 
 rial line as a complete circle, it will be lettered x, E, Y, w, 
 the letters E and w being at its extreme eastern and western 
 points, in relation to x. And since at these points it in- 
 tersects the Equator, the Equator will be also lettered Q, 
 E, K, w, the points E and w being identical in both circles, 
 and the point Q always in the meridian of x. Any circle 
 of latitude other than the stated eleven will be lettered at 
 its quarters, L, L 1, L 2, L 3, L 4, the point L being that 
 on the meridian of x ; and any full meridian circle other 
 than one of the stated twelve will be lettered M N, the 
 point M being that on the Equator nearest x, and N its 
 opposite. 
 
 29. And now note carefully that in drawing the globe, 
 or any large part of it, the meridian circles and latitude 
 circles are always to be drawn, with the lead, full round, 
 as if the globe were transparent. It is only thus that the 
 truth of their delicate contact with the limiting circle can 
 be reached. Then the visible part of the curve is to be 
 traced with pencil and color, and that on the opposite side 
 of the globe, and therefore invisible, to be either effaced, 
 or indicated by a dotted line. 
 
 Thus, in Figure 25, I complete the construction from 
 Figure 23 by first producing the lines R r, Q q, to meet 
 the circle on both sides, so as to give me a complete feel- 
 ing of the symmetry of the entire space within which my 
 elliptic curve must be drawn ; and then draw it round in 
 complete sweep, as steadily as I can, correcting it into a 
 
132 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 true ellipse by as much measurement as may be needful, 
 and with the best fastidiousness of my sight. Once the 
 perfect ellipse drawn, the question, which half of it is vis- 
 ible, depends on whether we intend the North or South 
 pole to be visible. If the North, the lower half of the 
 ellipse is the perspective of the visible half of the Equa- 
 tor ; and if the South, vice versa, the upper half of the 
 ellipse. 
 
 FIG. 25. 
 
 30. But the drawing becomes more difficult and subtle 
 when we deal with the perspective of a line of latitude, 
 as L M (Figure 24). For on completing this construction 
 in the same manner as Figure 23 is completed in Figure 
 25, we shall find the ellipse does not now touch the cir- 
 cle with its extremities, but with some part of its sides. 
 In Figure 26, 1 remove the constructing lines from Figure 
 24, and give only the necessary limiting ones, M m and L 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 133 
 
 1, produced : the ellipse being now drawn symmetrically 
 between these, so as to touch the circle, it will be seen 
 that its major axis falls beneath the point of contact, and 
 would have to be carried beyond the ellipse if it were to 
 meet the circle. On the small scale of these figures, and 
 in drawing large circles of latitude, the interval seems of 
 little importance ; yet on the beautiful drawing of it de- 
 
 FIG. 26. 
 
 pends the right expression of all rounded things whose 
 surface is traversed by lines from St. Peter's dome to 
 an acorn cup. In Figure 27 I give the segment of circle 
 from p to Y as large as my page allows, with the semi- 
 ellipse of the semicircle of latitude c M. The point of 
 contact with the circle is at z ; the axis major, drawn 
 through c, terminates at w, making u w equal to c M ; 
 and the pretty meeting of the curves w z and Y z h'ke the 
 
134 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 top of the rudder of a Venetian canal boat (the water be- 
 ing at the level x Y), becomes distinctly visible. 
 
 The semi-major axis u w is exactly equal to c M, as in 
 Figure 25 the entire major axis is equal to L M in Figure 
 24. 
 
 31. Lastly, if c M cross the stellar line, as in all figures 
 hitherto given, the ellipse always touches the circle, and 
 
 FIG. 27. 
 
 the portion of it beyond z is invisible, on the other side of 
 the globe, when we reduce the perspective figure to a 
 drawing. But, as we draw the circles of latitude smaller, 
 the interval between z and w increases, and that between 
 z and M diminishes, until z and M coincide on the stellar 
 line, and the ellipse touches the circle with the extremity 
 of its minor axis. As M draws still farther back towards 
 p, the ellipse detaches itself from the circle, and becomes 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 135 
 
 entirely visible ; and as we incline the pole more and 
 more towards us, the ellipses rise gradually into sight, be- 
 come rounder and rounder in their curves, and at last pass 
 into five concentric circles encompassed by the Equator 
 as we look vertically down on the pole. The construction 
 of the small circle of latitude L M, when the pole is de- 
 pressed to P, is given in Figure 28. 
 
 FIG. 28. 
 
 32. All this sounds at first extremely dreadful : but, 
 supposing the system of the Laws of Fesole generally ap- 
 proved and adopted, every parish school may soon be fur- 
 nished with accurate and beautiful drawings of the di- 
 vided sphere in various positions ; and the scholars led on 
 gradually in the practice of copying them, having always, 
 for comparison, the solid and engraved artificial globe in 
 their hands. Once intelligently masters of this Earth- 
 
136 
 
 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 perspective, there remain no more difficulties for them, 
 but those of delicate execution, in the drawing of 
 plates, or cups, or baskets, or crowns,* or any other 
 more or less circularly divided objects ; and gradually 
 they will perceive concurrences and cadences of mightier 
 lines in sea-waves, and mountain promontories, and arcs 
 of breeze-driven cloud. 
 
 33. One bit of hard work more, and we have done with 
 
 71 
 
 FIG. 29. 
 
 geometry for the present. We have yet to learn how to 
 draw any meridian in true perspective, the poles being 
 given in a vertical line. Let p and s, Figure 29, be the 
 
 * There are, of course, other perspective laws, dependent on the ap- 
 proach of the point of sight, introduced in the drawing of ordinary ob- 
 jects ; but none of these laws are ever mathematically carried out by 
 artists, nor can they be : every thing depends on the truth of their eyes 
 and ready obedience of their fingers. All the mathematicians in 
 
IK. OF MAP DRAWING. 
 
 137 
 
 poles, P being the visible one. Then Q M R N is the 
 Equator in its perspective relation to them ; p, the pole 
 of the stellar line, which line is here coincident with the 
 meridian of the place to which the map is polar. It is 
 required to draw another meridian at a given number of 
 degrees distant from the meridian of the place. 
 
 34. On the arc p Q, if the required meridian is to the 
 east of the place, or on the arc p R, if the required meri- 
 
 FIG. 30. 
 
 dian is to the west of it, measure an arc of the given 
 number of degrees, p n. Let fall the vertical n N on the 
 Equator, draw the diagonal M N through o ; and the re- 
 quired meridian will be the visible arc of the ellipse drawn, 
 
 France and England, with any quantity of time and every instrument in 
 their possession, could not draw a tress of wreathed hair in perspective : 
 but Veronese will do it, to practical sufficiency, with half a dozen con- 
 secutive touches of his pencil. 
 
138 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 so as to touch the circle, through the four points p N s M. 
 These four points, however placed, will always be sym- 
 metrical, the triangles o p N and o M s, if completed, be- 
 ing always equal and similar, and the points N and M equi- 
 distant from P and s. In Figure 30, I draw the curve, 
 showing only these points and the stellar line ; and you 
 may, by a little effort, imagine the figure to represent 
 two cups, or two kettle-drums, brim to brim, or rim to 
 rim. If you suppose them so placed that you can see the 
 inside of the cup on the left, the north pole is visible, and 
 the left-hand half of the ellipse. If you suppose the in- 
 side of the cup on the right visible, the north pole is visi- 
 ble, and the right-hand half of the ellipse. 
 
 35. And now, if you have really read and worked thus 
 far, with clear understanding, I very gladly congratulate 
 you on having mastered quite the most important ele- 
 ments of perspective in curved surfaces ; a mastership 
 which you will find extremely pleasurable in its conse- 
 quences, whatever the difficulty of its attainment. And 
 in the meantime you will without further trouble under- 
 stand the construction of the second figure in Plate IX. , 
 which gives the perspective of the globe on the line of 
 sight polar to Jerusalem ; assuming the longitude of 
 Jerusalem 35 east, from the meridian of Greenwich ; but 
 engraving the St. George's order of meridians, with the 
 Devon, Captains', Orient, and Occident in darker line. 
 The student may, with advantage, enlarge this example so 
 as to allow an inch to the widest interval of its meridians, 
 and then try for himself to draw the map of the hemi- 
 sphere accurately on this projection. If he succeed, he 
 will have a true perspective view of the globe, from the 
 given point of sight, a very different thing from a map of 
 
IX. OF MAP DRAWING. 139 
 
 it given on any ordinary projection : for, in the common 
 geographical methods, the countries and seas are distorted 
 into shapes, not only actually false, but which under no 
 possible conditions they could ever assume to the eye ; 
 while on this rightly -drawn projection, they appear as 
 they do on the artificial globe itself, and cannot therefore 
 involve the student in any kind of misconception. Maps, 
 properly so called, must include much less than the surface 
 of the hemisphere ; and the mode in which they are to 
 be drawn on this projection will be given in the eleventh 
 chapter. 
 
 36. It remains only to be observed that although in 
 English schools the Devon and Captains' line (meaning, 
 the line of the great Captains) are to be taken for the 
 first divisions in quartering the globe, and the Orient and 
 Occident lines, for us determined by them, the degrees of 
 longitude are to be counted from Galileo's line, the 
 meridian of Fesole. For if these laws of drawing are 
 ever accepted, as I trust, in other schools than our own, it 
 seems to me that their well- trained sailors may, waiving 
 false pride and vulgar jealousy, one day consent to esti- 
 mates of distance founded, for all, on the most sacred tra- 
 ditions of the Norman, the Tuscan, and the Argonaut ; 
 founded for the sailors of Marseilles and Venice of Pisa 
 and Amalfi of Salamis and the Hellespont, on the eter- 
 nal lines which pass through the Flint of Fesole, and the 
 Flowers of Ida. 
 
OHAPTEK X. 
 
 OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 1. I DO not doubt that you can call into your mind 
 with some distinctness the image of hawthorn hlossom ; 
 whether, at this time of reading, it he May or November, 
 I should like you, if possible, to look at the description of 
 it in Proserpina (TIL, p. 142) ; but you can certainly 
 remember the general look of it, in white masses among 
 green leaves. And you would never think, if I put a 
 pencil into your hand, and gave you choice of colors to 
 paint it with, of painting any part of it Hack. 
 
 Your first natural instinct would be to take pure green, 
 and lay that for the leaves ; and then, the brightest white 
 which you could find on the palette, and put that on in 
 bosses for the buds and blossoms. 
 
 2. And although immediate success in representation of 
 hawthorn might possibly not attend these efforts, that first 
 instinctive process would be perfectly right in principle. 
 The general effect of hawthorn is assuredly of masses of 
 white, laid among masses of green : and if, at the instiga- 
 tion of any learned drawing-master, you were to paint 
 part of every cluster of blossoms coal-black, you would 
 never be able to make the finished work satisfactory 
 either to yourself, or to other simple people, as long as 
 the black blot remained there. 
 
 3. You may perhaps think it unlikely that any draw- 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 ing-master would recommend you to paint hawthorn blos- 
 som half black. Kor, if instead of hawthorn, you had 
 peach or apple blossom to paint, would you expect such 
 recommendation for the better rendering of their rose- 
 color ? [Nor, if you had a gentian to paint, though its 
 blue is dark, would you expect to be told to paint half 
 the petals black ? 
 
 If, then, you have human flesh to paint, which, though 
 of much mingled and varied hue, is not, unless sunburnt, 
 darker than peach blossom ; and of which the ideal, ac- 
 cording to all poets, is that it should be white, tinted with 
 rose ; which also, in perfect health and purity, is some- 
 what translucent, certainly much more so than either 
 hawthorn buds or apple blossom Would you accept it 
 as a wise first direction towards the rendering of this 
 more living and varying color, to paint one side of a girl's 
 face black ? You certainly would not, unless you had 
 been previously beguiled into thinking it grand or artistic 
 to paint things under ' bold effects. ' 
 
 And yet, you probably have been beguiled, before 
 now, into admiring Raphael's Transfiguration, in which 
 everybody's faces and limbs are half black ; and into sup- 
 posing Rembrandt a master of chiaroscuro, because he can 
 paint a vigorous portrait with a black dab under the nose ! 
 
 4. Both Raphael and Rembrandt are masters, indeed ; 
 but neither of them masters of light and shade, in treat- 
 ment of which the first is always false, and the second 
 always vulgar. The only absolute masters of light and 
 shade are those who never make you think of light and 
 shade, more than [Nature herself does. 
 
 It will be twenty years, however, at least, before you 
 can so much as see the finer conditions of shadow in mas- 
 
142 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 ters of that calibre. In the meantime, so please you, we 
 will go back to our hawthorn blossom, which you have 
 begun quite rightly by painting white altogether ; but 
 which remains, nevertheless, incomplete on those condi- 
 tions. However, if its outline be right, and it detaches 
 itself from the green ground like a Florentine piece of 
 mosaic, with absolutely true contour of clustered petal, 
 and placing of scattered bud, you are already a far way on 
 the road to all you want of it. 
 
 5. What more you exactly want is now the question. 
 If the image of the flower is clear in your mind, you will 
 see it to be made up of buds, which are white balls, like 
 pearls ; and flowers, like little flattish cups, or rather sau- 
 cers, each composed of five hollow petals. 
 
 How do you know, by the look of them, that the balls 
 are convex, and the cups concave ? How do you know, 
 farther, that the balls are not quite round balls, but a lit- 
 tle flat at the top ? How do you know that the cups are 
 not deep, but, as I said, flattish, like saucers ? 
 
 You know, because a certain quantity of very delicate 
 pale gray is so diffused over the white as to define to the 
 eye exactly the degree in which its surfaces are bent ; 
 and the gradations of this gray are determined by the 
 form of surface, just as accurately as the outline is ; and 
 change with the same mathematical precision, at every 
 point of their course. So that, supposing the bud were 
 spherical, which it is not, the gradation of shade would 
 show that it was spherical ; and, flattened ever so little 
 though it be, the shade becomes different in that degree, 
 and is recognized by the eye as the shade of a hawthorn 
 blossom, and not of a mere round globule or bead. 
 
 6. But, for globule, globe, or grain, small or great, as 
 
APPELLAVITQUE LUCEM DIEM ETTENEBRAS NOCTERN. 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing. Plate X. 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 143 
 
 the first laws of line may best he learned in the lines of 
 the Earth, so also the first laws of light may best be learn- 
 ed in the light of the Earth. Not the hawthorn blossom, 
 nor the pearl, nor the grain of mustard or manna, not the 
 smallest round thing that lies as the hoar-frost on the 
 ground but around it, and upon it, are illuminated the 
 laws that bade the Evening and the Morning be the first 
 day. 
 
 7. So much of those laws you probably, in this learned 
 century, know already, as that the heat and light of the 
 sun are both in a fixed proportion to the steepness of his 
 rays, that they decline as the day, and as the summer 
 declines ; passing softly into the shadows of the Polar, 
 swiftly into those of the Tropic night. 
 
 But you probably have never .enough fastened in your 
 minds the fact that, whatever the position of the sun, and 
 whatever the rate of motion of any^ point on the earth 
 through the minutes, hours, or days of twilight, the meet- 
 ing of the margins of night and day is always constant in 
 the breadth of its zone of gradually expiring light ; and 
 that in relation to the whole mass of the globe, that pas- 
 sage from ' glow to gloom ' is as trenchant and swift as 
 between the crescent of the new moon and the dimness of 
 the " Auld mune in her airms." 
 
 8. The dimness, I say, observe ; not the blackness. 
 Against the depth of the night itself (as we see it) not 
 absolute blackness, the obscured space of the lunar ball 
 still is relieved in pallor, lighted to that dim degree by 
 the reflection from the Earth. Much more, in all the 
 forms which you will have to study in daylight, the dark 
 side is relieved or effaced, by variously diffused and re- 
 flected rays. But the first thing you have to learn and 
 
144 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 remember, respecting all objects whatever to be drawn in 
 light and shade, is that, by natural light of day, half of 
 them is in light, and half in shadow ; and the beginning 
 of all light and shade drawing is in the true, stern, and 
 perfect separation of these from each other. 
 
 9. Where you stand, and therefore whence you see the 
 object to be drawn, is a quite separate matter of inquiry. 
 As you choose, you may determine how much you will 
 see of its dark and how much of its light side : but the 
 first thing to be made sure of is the positive extent of 
 these two great masses : and the mode in which they are 
 involved or invaded at their edges. 
 
 And in determining this at first, you are to cast entirely 
 out of consideration all vestige or interference of modify- 
 ing reflective light. The arts, and the morality of men, 
 are founded on the same primal order ; you are not to 
 ask, in morals, what is less right and more, or less wrong 
 and more, until in every matter you have learned to rec- 
 ognize what is massively and totally Right, from what is 
 massively and totally Wrong. The beautiful enhance- 
 ments of passion in virtue, and the subtle redemptions of 
 repentance in sin, are only to be sought, or taken account 
 of, afterwards. And as the strength and facility of hu- 
 man action are undermined alike by the ardor of pride 
 and the cunning of exculpation, the work of the feeblest 
 artists may be known by the vulgar glittering of its light, 
 and the far-sought reflection in its shadow. 
 
 10 When the great separation between light and dark 
 has been thus determined, the entire attention of the stu-' 
 dent is to be first put on the gradation of the luminous 
 surface. 
 
 It is only on that surface that the form of the object is 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 145 
 
 exactly or consistently shown ; and the just distribution 
 of the light, on that alone, will be enough to characterize 
 the subject, even if the shadow be left wholly untouched. 
 The most perfectly disciplined and scientific drawings of 
 the Tuscan school consist of pure outlines on tinted 
 paper, with the lights laid on in gradated white, and the 
 darks left undistinguished from the ground. The group 
 of drawings by Turner to which, in the schools of Ox- 
 ford, i have given the title of the ' Nine Muses,' con- 
 sists, in like manner, of firm pencil outline on pale gray 
 paper ; the expression of form being entirely trusted to 
 lights gradated with the most subtle cure. 
 
 11. But in elementary work, the definition of the dark 
 side of the object against the background is to be insisted 
 upon, no less than the rising of the light side of the ob- 
 ject out of shadow. For, by this law, accuracy in the 
 outline on both sides will be required, and every tendency 
 to mystification repressed ; whereas, if once we allow 
 dark backgrounds to set off luminous masses, the errors of 
 the outline in the shadow may be concealed by a little 
 graceful manipulation ; and the drawing made to bear so 
 much resemblance in manner to a master's work, that the 
 student is only too likely to flatter himself, and be praised 
 by others, for what is merely the dissimulation of weak- 
 ness, or the disguise of error. 
 
 12. Farther : it is of extreme importance that no time 
 should be lost by the beginner in imitating the qualities 
 of shade attained by great masters, before he has learned 
 where shadow of any quality is to be disposed, or in 
 what proportion it is to be laid. Yet more, it is 
 essential that his eye should not be satisfied, nor his 
 work facilitated, by the more or less pleasant qualities of 
 
146 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 sliade in chalk or charcoal : he should be at once com- 
 pelled to practise in the media with which he must ulti- 
 mately produce the true effects of light and shade in the 
 noblest painting, media admitting no tricks of texture, 
 lustre, or transparency. Even sepia is open to some 
 temptation of this kind, and is to be therefore reserved 
 for the days when the young workman may pretend to 
 copy Turner or Holbein. For the beginner, pure and 
 plain lampblack is the safest, as the most sincere, of mate- 
 rials. 
 
 It has the farther advantage of being extremely diffi- 
 cult to manage in a wash ; so that, practising first in this 
 medium, you will have no difficulty with more tractable 
 colors. 
 
 13. In order not to waste paper, color, nor time, you 
 must be deliberate and neat in all proceedings : and above 
 all, you must have good paper and good pencils. Three 
 of properly varied size are supplied in your box ; to these 
 you must add a commoner one of the size of the largest, 
 which you are to keep separate, merely for mixing and 
 supplying color. 
 
 Take a piece of thick and smooth paper ; and outline 
 on it accurately a space ten inches high by five wide, 
 and, cutting it off so as to leave some half inch of margin 
 all round, arrange it, the narrow side up, on a book or 
 desk sloping at an angle of not less, nor much more, than 
 25. 
 
 Put two small teacup-saucers ; and your two pencils 
 one for supply, and one to draw with ; a glass of water, 
 your ivory palette-knife, and a teaspoon, comfortably be- 
 side you, and don't have any thing else on the table. 
 
 Being forced to content ourselves, for the present, with 
 
(( 
 
 X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. ' 147 
 
 tube colors, I must ask you to be very careful and neat 
 in their use. The aperture, in tubes of the size you are 
 supplied with, is about the eighth of an inch wide, and 
 with the slightest pressure (to be applied, remember, 
 always at the bottom of the tube, not the sides), you will 
 push out a little boss or round tower of color, which 
 ought not to be more than the eighth of an inch, or its 
 own width, above the top of the tube. Do not rub this 
 on the saucer, but take it neatly off with the edge of 
 your knife, and so put it in the saucer ; and screw the 
 top of your tube nicely on again, and put it back in its 
 place. 
 
 Now put two teaspoonfuls of water into one baucer, 
 and stir the color well into it with your supply pencil. 
 Then put the same quantity of pure water into the other 
 saucer, and you are ready to begin. 
 
 14. Take first a pencilful of quite pure water, and lead 
 it along the top of your five-inch space, leaving a little 
 ridge of water all the way. Then, from your supply 
 saucer, put a pencilful of the mixed color into the pure 
 water ; stir that up well with your pencil, and lead the 
 ridge of pure water down with that delicatest tint, about 
 half an inch, leaving another ridge all along. Then an- 
 other pencilful from the supply saucer into the other, 
 mixed always thoroughly, for the next half inch. Do not 
 put the supply pencil into the diluted tint, but empty it 
 by pressing on the side of the saucer, so that you may not 
 dilute the supply tint, which you are to keep, through the 
 course of each wash, quite evenly mixed. With twenty, 
 or one or two less than twenty, replenishing, and there- 
 fore darkenings, of the tint you are painting with, you 
 will reach the bottom of the ten -inch space ; which ought 
 
148 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 then already to present a quite visible gradation from 
 white to a very pale gray. 
 
 15. Leaving this to dry thoroughly, pour the diluted 
 tint you have been painting with away ; wash out the 
 saucer ; put in another supply of clear water ; and you 
 are ready to lay the second coat. The process being en- 
 tirely mechanical, you can read, or do any thing else you 
 like, while the successive coats are drying ; and each will 
 take longer than the last. But don't . go on with other 
 drawings, unless indeed you like to tint two pieces of 
 paper at once, and so waste less color using the diluted 
 tint of the first for the supply tint of the second, and so 
 gaining a still more delicate gradation. And whether 
 you do this or not, at every third coat pour the diluted 
 tint back into the supply one, which will else be too soon 
 exhausted. By the time you have laid on ten or twelve 
 tints, you will begin to see such faults and unevenness as 
 may at first be inevitable ; but also you will begin to feel 
 what is meant by gradation, and to what extent the deli- 
 cacy of it may be carried. Proceed with the work, how- 
 ever, until the color is so far diluted as to be ineffective ; 
 and do not rest satisfied till you are familiar enough with 
 this process to secure a gradated tint of even and pleasant 
 tone. As you feel more command of the pencil, you may 
 use less water with the color, and at last get your result 
 in three or four instead of twenty washes. 
 
 16. Next, divide the entire space into two equal squares, 
 by a delicate lead line across it, placing it upright in the 
 same manner ; and begin your gradation with the same 
 care, but replenishing the tint in the pure water from the 
 dark tint in as narrow spaces as you can, till you get down 
 the uppermost square. As soon as you pass the dividing 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 149 
 
 line between the two squares, continue with the same tint, 
 without darkening it, to the bottom, so that the lower 
 square may be all of one tone. Repeating this operation 
 three or four times, you will have the entire space divided 
 into two equal portions, of which the upper one will be 
 gradated from white into a delicate gray, and the lower 
 covered with a consistent shade of that gray in its ultimate 
 strength. This is to be your standard for the first shading 
 of all white objects ; their dark sides being of an uniform 
 tint of delicate gray, and their light sides modelled in 
 tones which are always paler in comparison with it. 
 
 17. Having practised in this cautious manner long 
 enough to obtain some ease in distribution of the tint, and 
 some feeling of the delicacy of a true gradation, you may 
 proceed to the more difficult, but wonderfully useful and 
 comprehensive exercise, necessary for the copying of 
 Plate X. 
 
 Draw first, with pencil-compasses, the two circles with 
 inch radius, and in the lower one trace lightly the limit 
 of its crescent of shade, on the 22nd meridian, considering 
 the vertical meridian that of Fesole. Then mix your tint 
 of black with two teaspoonfuls of water, very thoroughly, 
 and with that tint wash in at once the whole background 
 and shaded spaces. You need not care for precision on 
 their inner edges, but the tint must be exactly brought up 
 to the circumference of the circles on their light sides. 
 
 18. After 'the tint is thoroughly dry, begin with the 
 circle divided in half, and taking a very little pure water 
 to begin with, and adding, with a fine pencil, a little of 
 the dark tint as you work down, (putting the light part 
 upwards on your desk,) gradate, as you best can, to the 
 shadow edge, over which you are to carry whatever tint 
 
150 THE LAWS OF FlSSOLE. 
 
 you Lave then in your pencil, flat and unchanged, to the 
 other side of the circle, darkening equally the entire dark 
 side. 
 
 In the lower circle, the point of highest light is at the 
 equator, on the 4th meridian. The two balls therefore, 
 as shaded in the plate, represent two views of the revolv- 
 ing earth, with the sun over the equator. The lower fig- 
 ure gives what is also the light and shade of the moon in 
 her third quarter. I do not choose to represent the part 
 of the earth under the night as black : the student may 
 suppose it to be in full moonlight if he likes ; but the use 
 of the figure is mainly to show the real, and narrow, extent 
 of resources at his disposal, in a light and shade drawing 
 executed without accidental reflected lights, and under no 
 vulgar force of shadow. With no greater depths of tint 
 than those here given, he must hold it his skill to ren- 
 der every character of contour in beautiful forms ; and 
 teach himself to be more interested in them, as displayed 
 by that primal sincerity of light, than when seen under 
 any accidental effects, or violent contrasts. 
 
 19. The tint prepared with two teaspoonfuls of water, 
 though quite as dark as the student will be able at first to 
 manage, (or as any master can manage in complex masses,) 
 will not, when dry, give shadow more than half the depth 
 of that used for the background in the plate. It must 
 therefore be twice laid ; the skill of the pencil manage- 
 ment will be tested by the consistency of the two out- 
 lines. At the best, they are sure to need a little retouch- 
 ing ; and where accurately coincident, their line will be 
 hard, and never so pleasant as that left at the edge of a 
 first wash. I wish the student especially to notice this, 
 for in actual drawing, it is a matter of absolute necessity 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 151 
 
 never to reduplicate a wash at the same edge. All beau- 
 tiful execution depends *on giving the outline truly with 
 the first tint laid as dark as it is required. This is always 
 possible with well-prepared colors in a master's hand ; 
 yet never without so much haste as must, unless the mas- 
 tery be indeed consummate, leave something to be for- 
 given, of inaccuracy, or something to be grateful for, in 
 the rewarding chance which always favors a lightness in 
 method. The most distinctive charm of water-color ^ as 
 opposed to oil, is in the visible merit of this hasty skill, 
 and the entertaining concurrence of accidental felicity. 
 In the more deliberate laying of oil-color, though Fortune 
 always takes her due share, it is not recognizable by the 
 spectator, and is held to the utmost in control by the 
 resolution of the workman, when his mind is wise, and his 
 piece complete. 
 
 20. But the student must not be discouraged by the 
 difficulty he will find at first in reaching any thing like 
 evenness or serenity of effect in such studies. Neither 
 these, nor any other of the exercises in this book, are 
 ' elementary, ' in the sense of easy or initial ; but as in- 
 volving the first elements of all graphic Law. And this 
 first study of light and shade in Plate X. does indeed in- 
 volve one law of quite final importance ; but which may 
 nevertheless be simply expressed, as most essential mat- 
 ters may be, by people who wish it. 
 
 21. The gradation which you have produced on your 
 first ten-inch space is, if successful, consistent in its in- 
 crease of depth, from top to bottom. But you may see 
 that in Plate X. the light -is diffused widely and brightly 
 round the foci, and fades with accelerated diminution to- 
 wards the limit of darkness. By examining the law under 
 
152 
 
 THE LAWS OF FlSSOLE. 
 
 which this decrease of light takes place on a spherical (or 
 cylindrical*) surface, we may deduce a general law, regu- 
 lating the light in impact on any curved surface whatever. 
 
 In all analysis of curved lines it is necessary first to re- 
 gard them as made up of a series of right lines, afterwards 
 considering these right lines as infinitely short. 
 
 22. Let therefore the line A B, Figure 31, represent any 
 plane surface, or an infinitely small portion of any curved 
 
 surface, on which the light, coming in the direction of the 
 arrows, strikes at a given angle BAG. 
 
 Draw from B, B p perpendicular to A c, and make B P 
 equal to A B. 
 
 Then the quantity of Kght, or number of rays of light, 
 supposing each arrow to represent a ray, which the so in- 
 clined surface A B can receive, is to the quantity it could 
 
 * In the upper figure, the actual gradation is the same as that which 
 would be true for a cylinder. 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 153 
 
 receive if it were perpendicular to the light, (at p B,) as 
 the line B o is to the line P B, which is equal to the line 
 A B. 
 
 Therefore if we divide the line A B, from A to B, into 
 any number of degrees, representing the gradual diminu- 
 tion of light, uniformly, from any given maximum at A 
 to any given minimum at B, and draw the circle c T with 
 the radius B c, cutting A B in T, the point T, on the scale 
 
 FIG. 32. 
 
 of shade so gradated, will mark the proper tint of shade 
 for the entire surface A B. 
 
 This general law, therefore, determines the tint of 
 shade, in any given scale of shade, for the point of any 
 curved surface to which the line A B is a tangent. 
 
 23. Applying this general law to the light and shade of 
 a sphere, let the light, coming in the direction L v, Fig- 
 ure 32, strike the surface of the quadrant p A at the point 
 v, to which the line x y is a tangent. B being the centre 
 
154: THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 of the sphere, join B v, and from A draw A c parallel to 
 x y, and therefore perpendicular to B v. Produce L v 
 to M, and draw the arc of circle c T, cutting A B in T. 
 
 Then, by the law last enunciated, if we divide the line 
 A B uniformly into any number of degrees of shade from 
 the maximum of light at A to its minimum at B, the point 
 T will indicate, on that scale, the proper shade for the 
 point of sphere-surface, v. And because B v equals B A, 
 and the angle B v M equals the angle ABC, . *. M v equals 
 B T ; and the degree of shade may at once be indicated for 
 any point on the surface A p by letting fall a vertical from 
 it on the uniformly gradated scale A B. 
 
 24. Dividing that scale into ninety degrees from A to 
 B, we find that, on the globe, when the sun is over the 
 equator, the Christian circle, though in 60 degrees north 
 latitude, receives yet 45 degrees of light, or half the quan- 
 tity of the equatorial light, and that, approximately,* 
 the losses of the strength of light in the climates of the 
 five circles are, 
 
 St. James's, 3 degrees loss, leaving 87 of light. 
 Arabian, 12 degrees loss, leaving 78 of light. 
 Venetian, 26 degrees loss, leaving 64 of light. 
 Christian, 45 degrees loss, leaving 45 of light. 
 Fern, 67 degrees loss, leaving 23 of light. 
 
 But it is always to be remembered that in the real pass- 
 ing of day into night, the transition from the final de- 
 gree of shadow on the gradated curvature of the illumi- 
 
 * Calculated to two places of decimals by Mr. Macdonald, the Master 
 of my Oxford schools, the fractional values are 3.07, 12.06, 26.36, and 
 66.71, giving the regulated diminishing intervals 8.99, 4.30, 18.64, 
 21.71, and 23.29, or, roughly, 9, 14, 18, 21, 23. 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 155 
 
 nated hemisphere, to night itself, is a much greater one 
 than it is our power to express by any scale : so that our 
 90 measured degrees do not carry us even into twilight, 
 but only to the point and moment of sunset. They ex- 
 press, however, with approximate accuracy, the relation 
 of the terrestrial climate so far as it depends on solar in- 
 fluences only, and the consequently relative power of 
 light on vegetation and animal life, taking the single 
 numerical expression as a mean for the balanced effect of 
 summer and winter.* 
 
 25. Without encumbering himself, in practice, by any 
 attempts to apply this, or any similar geometric formulae, 
 during the progress of his work, (in which the eye, mem- 
 ory, and imagination are to be his first, and final, instru- 
 ments,) the student is yet to test his results severely by 
 the absolute decrees of natural law ; and however these 
 may be prudently relaxed in compliance with the narrow- 
 ness of his means, or concession to the feebleness of his 
 powers, he is always to remember that there is indeed a 
 right, and a wrong, attendant on the purpose and act of 
 every touch, firm as the pillars of the e^frth, measured as 
 the flight of its hours, and lovely as the moral law, from 
 which one jot or tittle shall not pass, till all be fulfilled. 
 
 26. Together with these delicate exercises in neutral 
 tint, the student cannot too early begin practice in laying 
 frank and full touches of every zodiacal color, within 
 stated limits. He may advisably first provide himself 
 with examples of the effects of opposition in color, by 
 
 * The difference in effective heat between rays falling at large or 
 small angles, cannot be introduced in this first step of analysis : still less 
 is it necessary to embarrass the young student by any attempt to gen- 
 eralize the courses of the isothermal lines. 
 
15f? THE LAWS OF F^SOLE. 
 
 drawing the square of the Fern line, measured on his 
 twelve-inch globe, within the square of the Venetian 
 line ; then filling the interior square with any one of the 
 zodiacal colors, and the enclosing space between it and the 
 larger square, with the opponent color : trying also the 
 effect of opposition between dark tints of one color and 
 light tints of the other : each wash to be laid on at once, 
 and resolutely left without retouching. The student will 
 thus gradually gain considerable power of manipulating 
 the pencil, with full color ; recognize more clearly day by 
 day how much he has to gain ; and arrive at many inter- 
 esting conclusions as to the value and reciprocal power of 
 opposed hues. 
 
 27. All these exercises must, however, be kept in sub- 
 ordination to earnest and uninterrupted practice with the 
 pen-point or the lead ; of which I give two more exam- 
 ples in the present number of Fesole, which, with those 
 already set before the student, Plates V. , VI. , and VIII. , 
 will form a quite sufficient code for his guidance until I 
 can begin the second volume.* 
 
 28. Plate Xft represents, as far as mezzotint easily can, 
 a drawing of the plan and profile of a leaf of wild gera- 
 nium, made lightly with the lead, and secured by a single 
 washed tint above it. 
 
 Every care is to be given in study of this kind to get 
 the outline as right and as refined as possible. Both shade 
 and color are to be held entirely subordinate ; yet shade is 
 to be easily and swiftly added, in its proper place, and 
 any peculiar local color may be indicated, by way of mem- 
 orandum, in the guarding tint, without attempting the 
 effect of a colored drawing. Neither is any finish or 
 
 * During the spring I must confine my work wholly to Proserpina. 
 
'UDY WITH THE LEAD AND SINGLE TINT. LEAFOF HERB-ROBERT. 
 Schools of St. George. Elementary Drawing. Plate XI. 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 157 
 
 depth to be sought in the shade. It should rightly indi- 
 cate the surges or troughs of the leaf, and the course and 
 projection of large ribs, (when the plan drawing is made 
 of the under surface,) but it must not be laboriously com- 
 pleted or pursued. No study of this kind should ever 
 take more than an hour for plan and profile both : but 
 the outline should be accurate to the utmost of the stu- 
 dent's power, and as delicate as the lead will draw. 
 
 29. Although, in beginning, precise measurements are 
 to be taken of the leaf's length and breadth, yet the mis- 
 takes inevitable during execution cannot be easily cor- 
 rected without some variation in the size ; it is far better 
 to lose the exact measurement than the feeling of the 
 form. Thus my profile is nearly a quarter of an inch too 
 long for the plan, because I could not get the spring of it 
 to my mind in its first proportion. The plan may gen- 
 erally be kept to its true scale ; and at all events the 
 measures should be marked for reference within their 
 proper geometrical limits, as in the upper outline, of 
 which I have more to say in another place. 
 
 30. Plate XII. gives example of an equally rapid 
 mode of study when the object is essentially light and 
 shade. Here the ground is a deeply toned gray paper ; 
 the outline is made with stern decision, but without care 
 for subtlety in minor points ; some gradations of shade 
 are rapidly added with the lead, (BB) ; and finally, the 
 high lights, laid on with extreme care with body-white. 
 Theoretically, the outline, in such a study as this, should 
 always be done first : but practically, I find it needful, 
 with such imperfect skill as I have, to scrabble in the 
 pencil shadows for some guide to the places of the lights ; 
 and then fasten every thing down firmly with the pen out 
 
158 THE LAWS OF 
 
 line. Then I complete the shadow as far as needful ; 
 clear the lights with bread first ; and then, which is the 
 gist of the whole, lay the high lights with carefullest dis- 
 cipline of their relations. 
 
 Mr. Allen's very skilful mezzotint ground is more ten- 
 der and united than the pencil shadow was, in this case ; 
 or usually need be : but the more soft it is the better ; 
 only let no time be lost upon it. 
 
 31. Plate VIII. , given in the last number of Fesole, 
 for illustration of other matters, represents also the com- 
 plete methods of wholesome study with the pen and sepia, 
 for advanced rendering both of form and chiaroscuro. 
 
 Perfect form never can be given but with color (see 
 above, Chapter VIII. 22). But the foundational ele- 
 ments of it may be given in a very impressive and useful 
 way by the pen, with any washed tint. In the upper 
 study the pen only is used ; and when the forms are com- 
 plete, no more should be attempted ; for none but a great 
 master can rapidly secure fine form with a tint. But 
 with the pen, thus used, much may be reached by the 
 student in very early stages of his progress. 
 
 32. Observe that in work of this kind, you are not to 
 be careful about the direction or separation of the lines ; 
 but, on the other hand, you are not to slur, scrabble, or 
 endeavor to reach the mysterious qualities of an etching. 
 Use an ordinarily fine pen-point, well kept down and let 
 the gradations be got by the nearness or separation, single- 
 ness or crossing of the lines, but not by any faintness in 
 them. 
 
 But if the forms be simple, and there be a variety of 
 local colors which is important in the subject, as, in the 
 lower study, the paleness of the stamens of the pink in 
 
PLATE XII. LIGHT AND SUADE WITH REFUSAL OF COLOR. 
 
 PETAL-VAU/T OF SCARLET (JERANIOI. SCHOOLS OF 
 
 ST. GEORGE, ELEMENTARY DRAWING. 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 159 
 
 relation to its petals, use the pen only for fine outline, 
 as in Plate XII. ; and when that is perfectly dry, com- 
 plete the light and shade with as few washes as possible. 
 
 33. It is also to be noted that a dark background is ad- 
 missible only, in chiaroscuro study, when you intend to 
 refuse all expression of color, and to consider the object 
 as if it were a piece of sculpture in white marble. To 
 illustrate this point more strongly, I have chosen for the 
 chiaroscuro plate, XII. , a cluster of scarlet geranium ; in 
 which the abstraction of the form from the color brings 
 out conditions of grace and balance in the blossom which 
 the force of the natural color disguised. On the other 
 hand, when the rich crimson of the Clarissa flower (Plate 
 VIII.) is to be shown in opposition to the paler green of 
 its stamens, I leave the background pure white. The 
 upper figure in the same plate being studied for form only, 
 admits any darkness of background which may relieve the 
 contour on the light side. 
 
 34. The method of study which refuses local color, 
 partly by the apparent dignity and science of it, and 
 partly by the feverish brilliancy of effect induced, in en- 
 graving, by leaving all the lights white, became the pre- 
 ferred method of the schools of the Renaissance, headed 
 by Leonardo : and it was both familiarized and perpetu- 
 ated by the engravings of Durer and Marc Antonio. It 
 has been extremely mischievous in this supremacy ; but 
 the technical mischief of it is so involved with moral 
 faults proceeding from far other causes, that I must not 
 here attempt its analysis. Every student ought, however, 
 to understand, and sometimes to use, the method ; but 
 all main work is to be with the severest respect to local 
 color, and with pure white background. 
 
160 THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 35. Note yet once more. Although for facility of 
 work, when form alone is needed, the direction of the 
 pen-stroke is to be disregarded, yet, if texture, or any 
 organic character in the surface of the object, be mani- 
 fest, the direction or manner of breaking, in the pen 
 touch, may pleasantly comply with such character, and 
 suggest it. The plate of Contorta Purpurea (VII. in 
 Proserpina) is thus engraved with the double intention of 
 expressing the color of the flower and the texture of the 
 leaf, and may serve for enough example in this particu- 
 lar ; but it is always to be remembered that such expedi- 
 ents are only partial and suggestive, and that they must 
 never be allowed to waste time, or distract attention. 
 Perfect rendering of surface can only be given by perfect 
 painting, and in all elementary work the student should 
 hold himself well disengaged from serfdom to a particular 
 method. As long as he can get more truths in a given 
 time, by letting his pen-point move one way rather than 
 another, he should let it easily comply with the natural 
 facts, but let him first be quite sure he sees the facts to 
 be complied with. It is proper to follow the striae of an 
 ophrys leaf with longitudinal touches, but not, as vulgar 
 engravers, to shade a pearl with concentric circles. 
 
 36. Note, finally, that the degree of subtlety in obser- 
 vation and refinement of line which the student gives to 
 these incipient drawings must be regulated in great de- 
 gree by his own sense and feeling, with due relation to 
 the natural power of his sight : and that his discretion 
 and self-command are to be shown not more in the perse- 
 verance of bestowing labor to profit, than in the vigilance 
 for the instant when it should cease, and obedience to 
 the signals for its cessation. The increasing power of 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 161 
 
 finish is always a sign of progress ; but the most zealous 
 student must often be content to do little ; and the great- 
 est observe the instant when he can do no more. 
 
 37. The careless and insolent manners of modern art 
 study, (for the most part,) forbid me the dread of o*er- 
 insistance on minutiae of practice ; but I have not, for 
 such reason, added to the difficulty or delicacy of the ex- 
 ercises given. On the contrary, they are kept, by con- 
 sistent attention, within the easy reach of healthy youth- 
 ful hand and sight ; and they are definitely representative 
 of what should properly be done in drawings, as distin- 
 guished from the qualities attainable by the consummate 
 line-engraver. As an example of what, in that more sub- 
 tle kind, the human eye and finger can accomplish by 
 severe industry, every town library ought to possess, and 
 make conveniently accessible to its students, the great bo- 
 tanical series of the Florae Danicae. The drawings for 
 the numbers produced before the year 1820 were in better 
 taste, and the engravings more exemplary in manner, 
 than in the supplementary numbers lately in course of 
 publication : but the resolute and simple effort for excel- 
 lence is unfailing throughout ; and for precision and pa- 
 tience of execution, the nine plates, 27M to 2753, may be 
 safely taken as monumental of the honor, grace, and, in 
 the most solemn sense, majesty, of simple human work,* 
 maintained amidst and against all the bribes, follies, and 
 lasciviousness of the nineteenth century. 
 
 38. Together with these, and other such worthily exe- 
 
 * With truly noble pride, neither the draughtsman nor the engraver 
 have set their names to the plates. " We are Men," they say, " with 
 the hearts and hands of Men. That is all you need know. Our names 
 are nothing to you." 
 
162 THE LAWS OF FE*SOLE. 
 
 cuted illustrations of natural history, every public institu- 
 tion should possess several copies of the ' Tresor Artistique 
 de la France, ' now publishing in Paris. It contains repre- 
 sentations, which no mechanical art can be conceived ever 
 likeiy to excel, of some of the best ornamental designs ex- 
 isting ; with others, (I regret to observe, as yet, much the 
 plurality,) of Renaissance jewellery, by which the foulness 
 and dulness of the most reputed masters of that epoch 
 are illustrated with a force which has not hitherto been 
 possible. The plates, which represent design of the 
 greater ages, more especially those of the Boite d'Evan- 
 geliaire of St. Denis, with the brooch and cassette of St. 
 Louis, had better be purchased by those of my students 
 who can afford the cost ; and with these, also, the un- 
 colored plates of the Coffret a Bijoux of Anne of Austria, 
 which is exemplary of the best Renaissance .wreathen 
 work. The other pieces of sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 tury toys, given in this publication, are all of them lead- 
 ing examples of the essential character of Renaissance 
 art, the pride of Thieves, adorned by the industiy of 
 Fools, under the mastership of Satyrs. As accurately 
 representative of these mixtures of betise with abomina- 
 tion, the platter and ewer executed in Germany, as an 
 offering to the Emperor Charles V. on his victory at Tu- 
 nis, are of very notable value : but a more terrific lesson 
 may be read in the ghastly and senseless Gorgons of the 
 armor of Henrv II. , if the student of history remember, 
 in relation to them, the entertainment with which he 
 graced his Queen's coronation ; and the circumstances of 
 his own death. 
 
 39. The relations between the rich and poor, on which 
 the pomp of this Renaissance art was founded, may be 
 
X. OF LIGHT AND SHADE. 163 
 
 sufficiently illustrated by two short passages, almost con- 
 secutive, in ( Evelyn 's Diary ' : 
 
 "11 May (1651). To the Palace Cardinal, where y e 
 M r . of Ceremonies plac'd me to see y e royal masque or 
 opera. The first sceane represented a chariot of singers 
 compos'd of the rarest voices that could be procur'd, rep- 
 resenting Cornaro and Temperance ; this was overthrowne 
 by Bacchus and his Revellers ; the rest consisted of sev- 
 eral enterics and pageants of excesse, by all the Elements. 
 A masque representing fire was admirable ; then came a 
 Tenus out of y e clouds. The conclusion was an heaven, 
 whither all ascended. But the glory of the masque was 
 the greate persons performing in it : the French King, 
 his brother the Duke of Anjou, with all the grandees of 
 the Court, the King performing to the admiration of all. 
 The music was 29 violins, vested a Vantiq, but the habits 
 of the masquers were stupendiously rich and glorious. 
 
 " 29 January. I sat out in a coach for Calais, in an 
 exceeding hard frost, which had continued some time. 
 We got that night to Beaumont ; 30, to Beauvais ; 31, 
 we found the ways very deepe w th snow, and it was ex- 
 ceeding cold ; din'd at Pois ; lay at Pernee, a miserable 
 cottage of miserable people in a wood, wholly unfur- 
 nished, but in a little time we had sorry beds and some 
 provision, w ch they told me, they hid in y e wood for f eare 
 of the frontier enemy, the garisons neere them continually 
 plundering what they had. They were often infested 
 with wolves. I cannot remember that I ever saw more 
 miserable creatures." 
 
 40. It is not, I believe, without the concurrence of the 
 
164: THE LAWS OF FESOLE. 
 
 noblest Fors, that I have been compelled, in my reference 
 to this important French series of illustrative art, to lead 
 the student's attention forward into some of the higher sub- 
 jects of reflection, which for the most part I reserve for the 
 closing volume of the Laws of Fesole. Counting less than 
 most men, what future days may bring or deny to me, 
 I am thankful to be permitted, in the beginning of a New 
 Year of which I once little thought to see the light, to 
 repeat, with all the force of which my mind is yet capa- 
 ble, the lesson I have endeavored to teach through my 
 past life, that this fair Tree Igdrasil of Human Art can 
 only flourish when its dew is Affection ; its air, Devotion ; 
 the rock of its roots, Patience ; and its sunshine, God. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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