most beautiful and permanent effects. The red of the definitive scale, Pl. 1. fig. 3. is of the pigments 1. and 2. combined. Liquid rubiate affords also a fine red ink,-and is a durable stain which bears washing, for marking, painting, or printing on cotton or linen cloth, &c. 3. SCARLET LAKE is prepared in form of drops from cochineal, and is of a beautiful transparent red colour, and excellent body, working well both in water and oil, though, like other lakes, it dries slowly. Strong light discolours and destroys it both in water and oil; and its tints with white lead, and its combinations with other pigments, are not permanent; yet when well prepared and judiciously used in sufficient body, and kept from strong light, it has been known to last many years; but it ought never to be employed in glazing, nor at all in performances that aim at high reputation and durability. It is commonly tinted with vermilion, which has probably been mixed with lakes at all times to give them scarlet hue and add to their weight; for upon examining with a powerful lens some fine pictures of antient masters, in which lake had been used in glazing, particles of vermilion were apparent, from which lake had evidently flown: unfortunately, however, these lakes are injured by vermilion as they are by lead, so that glazings of cochineal lake over vermilion or lead are particularly apt to vanish. This effect is very remarkable in several pictures of Cuyp, in which he has introduced a figure in red from which the shadows have disappeared, owing to their having been formed with lake over vermilion. 4. FLORENTINE LAKE differs from the last only in the mode of preparation, the lake so called having been formerly extracted from the shreds of scarlet cloth. The same may be said also of Chinese Lake. 5. HAMBURGH LAKE is a lake of great power and depth of colour, purplish, or inclining to crimson, which dries with extreme difficulty, but differs in no other essential quality from other cochineal lakes-an observation which applies to various lakes under the names of Roman Lake, Venetian Lake, and many others; not one of which, however respectively beautiful or reputed, is entitled to the character of durability either in hue, shade, or tint. 6. KERMES LAKE is the name of an antient pigment, perhaps the earliest of the European lakes; which name is sometimes spelt cermes, whence probably cermosin and crimson, and kermine or carmine. In some old books it is called vermilion, in allusion to the insect, or vermes, from which it is prepared; a title usurped probably by the sulphuret of mercury or cinnabar, which now bears the name of vermilion. This lake is prepared from the kermes, which formerly supplied the place of cochineal. We have obtained the kermes from Poland, where it is still collected; and some with which we have been favoured was brought from Cefalonia by Colonel C. J. Napier, who states that it is employed by the modern Greeks under the appellation xúpvo xóxivo, for dying their caps red. This substance and the lac of India probably afforded the lakes of the Venetian painters, and of the earliest painters in oil of the school of Van Eyck. Some old specimens of the pigment which we obtained were in drops of a powdery texture and crimson colour, warmer than cochineal lakes, and having less body and brilliancy, but worked well, and withstood the power of light better than the latter, though the sun ultimately discoloured and destroyed them. In all other respects they resemble the lakes of cochineal. 7. LAC LAKE is prepared from the lac or lacca of India, and is perhaps the first of the family of lakes. Its colouring matter resembles those of the cochineal and kermes, in being the production of a species of insects. Its colour is rich, transparent, and deep,-less brilliant and more durable than those of cochineal and kermes, but inferior in both these respects to the colours of madder. Used in body or strong glazing, as a shadow colour, it is of great power and much permanence; but in thin glazing it changes and flies, as it does also in tint with white lead. A great variety of lakes, equally beautiful as those of cochineal, have been prepared from this substance in a recent state in India and China, many of which we have tried, and found uniformly less durable in proportion as they were more beautiful. In the properties of drying, &c. they resemble other lakes. This appears to have been the lake which has stood best in old pictures, and was probably used by the Venetians, who had the trade of India when painting flourished at Venice. It is sometimes called Indian Lake. 8. CARMINE, a name originally given only to the fine feculences of the tinctures of kermes and cochineal, denotes generally at present any pigment which resembles them in beauty, richness of colour, and fineness of texture: hence we hear of blue and other coloured carmines, though the term is principally confined to the crimson and scarlet colours produced from cochineal by the agency of tin. These carmines are the brightest and most beautiful colours prepared from cochineal,—of a fine powdery texture and velvety richness. They vary from a rose colour to a warm red; work admirably; and are in other respects, except the most essential—the want of durability, excellent pigments in water and oil :-they have not, however, any permanence in tint with white lead, and in glazing are soon discoloured and destroyed by the action of light, but are little affected by impure air, and are in other respects like the lakes of cochineal; all the pigments prepared from which may be tested by their solubility in liquid ammonia, which purples lakes prepared from the woods, but does not dissolve their colours. 9. MADDER CARMINE, or Field's Carmine, is, as its name expresses, prepared from madder. It differs from the rose lakes of madder principally in texture, and in the greater richness, depth, and transparency of its colour, which is of various hues from rose colour to crimson. These in other respects resemble the rubric or madder lakes, and are the only durable carmines for painting either in water or oil; for both which their texture qualifies them without previous grinding or preparation.-See Madder Lake, vII. 1. 10. ROSE PINK is a coarse kind of lake, produced by dying chalk or whitening with decoction of Brazil wood, &c. It is a pigment much used by paper-stainers, and in the commonest distemper painting, &c., but is too perishable to merit the attention of the artist. Its 11. ROUGE. The Rouge Vegetale of the French is a species of carmine, prepared from safflow or safflower, of exquisite beauty and great cost. principal uses consist in dyeing silks of rose colours, and in combining with levigated talc to form the paint of the toilette, or cosmetic colours employed by the fair, who would have Blooming youth and gay delight This pigment is, however, of too fugitive a colour to merit the attention of the artist, notwithstanding its great beauty, richness of colour, transparency, and free-working,-qualities which occasion it to be too often employed in heightening the apparent excellence of lakes and carmines. Chinese Rouge and Pink Saucers have much of these qualities, and appear to be prepared also from the carthamus or safflower. VIII. RED ORPIMENT. See Orange Orpiment. CHAP. XI. OF BLUE. Where'er we gaze,-around, above, below, What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found! And bluest skies that harmonize the whole. BYRON'S CHILDE HAROLD. THE third and last of the primary, or simple colours, is blue, which bears the same relation to shade that yellow does to light; hence it is the most retiring and diffusive of all colours, except purple and black and all colours have the power of throwing it back in painting, in greater or less degree, in proportion to the intimacy of their relations to light; first white, then yellow, orange, red, &c. Blue alone possesses entirely the quality technically called coldness in colouring, and it communicates this property variously to all other colours with which it happens to be compounded. It is most powerful in a strong light, and appears to become neutral and pale in a declining light, owing to its ruling affinity with black or shade, and its power of absorbing light: hence the eye of the artist is liable to be deceived when painting with blue in too low a light, or toward the close of day, to the endangering of the warmth and harmony of his picture. Blue enters into combination with yellow in the composition of all greens, and with red in all purples; it characterizes the tertiary olive, and is also the prime colour or archeus of the neutral black, &c., and also of the semineutral slate colour, &c.: hence blue is changed in hue less than any other colour by mixture with black, as it is also by distance. It enters also subordinately into all other tertiary and broken colours, and, as nearest in the scale to black, it breaks and contrasts powerfully and agreeably with white, as in watchet or pale blues, the sky, &c. It is less active than the other primaries in reflecting light, and therefore is sooner lost as a local colour by assimilation with distance. It is an antient doctrine that the azure of the sky is a compound of light and darkness, and some have argued hence that blue is not a primary colour, but a compound of black and white; but pure or neutral black and white compound in infinite shades, all of which are neutral also, or grey. It is true that a mixture of black and white is of a cool hue, because black is not a primary colour but a compound of the three primary colours in which blue predominates, and this predominance is rendered more sensible when black is diluted with white. As to the colour of the sky, in which light and shade are compounded, it is neutral also, and never blue except by contrast: thus, the more the light of the sun partakes of the golden or orange hue, and the more parched and burnt the earth is, the bluer appears the sky, as in Italy, and all hot countries. In England, where the sun is cooler, and a perpetual verdure reigns, infusing blue latently into the landscape, the sky is warmer and nearer to neutrality, and partakes of a diversity of grays, beautifully melodizing with blue as their key, and harmonizing with the light and the landscape. Thus the colour of the sky is always a contrast to the direct and reflected light of the scene: if therefore this light were of a rose-colour, the neutral of the sky would be converted into green; or if the light were purple, the sky would become yellow, and such would it be in all other cases, according to the laws of chromatic equivalence and contrast, as often in the openappears ings of coloured clouds at the rising and setting of the sun. Blue is discordant in juxtaposition with green, and in a less degree so with purple, both which are cool colours, and therefore blue requires its contrast, orange, in equal proportion, either of surface or intensity, to compensate or resolve its dissonances and correct its coldness: of all colours, except black, it contrasts white most powerfully. In all harmonious combinations of colours, whether of mixture or neighbourhood, blue is the natural, prime, or predominating power: accordingly blue is in colouring what the note C is in music,-the natural key, archeus or ruling tone, universally agreeable to the eye, when in due relation to the composition, and may be more frequently repeated therein, purely or unbroken, than either of the other primaries: this is however a matter of taste, as in music, and subject to artificial rules founded on the laws of chromatic combination. The moral expression, or effects of blue, or its influence on the |