harmony of colour; yet it may be admitted, that things are not always known by their colour; nay, that the actual local colour of objects is mainly altered by effects of light, and we are accustomed to see the same things, _quoad_ colour, variously presented to us--and the inference that we think artists may draw from this fact is, that there will be allowed them a great licence in all cases of colour, and that naturalness may be preserved without exactness--and here will lie the value of a true theory of the harmony of colours, and the application of colouring to pictures, most suitable to the intended impression, not the most appropriate to the objects. We have often laid some stress upon this in the pages of _Maga_--and we think it has been too much omitted in the consideration of artists. Every one knows what is called a Claude glass. We see nature through a coloured medium--yet we do not doubt that we are looking at nature--at trees, at water, at skies--nay, we admire the colour--see its harmony and many beauties--yet we know them to be, if we may use the term, misrepresented. While speaking of the Claude glass, it will not be amiss to notice a peculiarity. It shows a picture--when the unaided eye will not; it heightens illumination--brings out the most delicate lights, scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, and gives greater power to the shades, yet preserves their delicacy. It seems to annihilate all those rays of light, which, as it were, intercept the picture--that come between the eye and the object. But to return to colour--we say that it must, in the midst of its license, preserve its naturalness--which it will do if it have a meaning in itself. But when we are called upon to question what is the meaning of this or that colour, how does its effect agree with the subject? why is it outrageously yellow or white, or blue or red, or a jumble of all these?--which are questions, we confess, that we and the public have often asked, with regard to Turner's late pictures--we do not acknowledge a naturalness--the license has been abused--not "sumpta pudenter." It is not because the vividness of "a blade of grass or a scarlet flower" shall be beyond the power of pigment, that a general glare and obtrusion of such colours throughout a picture can be justified. We are astonished that any man with eyes should see the unnaturalness in colour of Salvator and Titian, and not see it in Turner's recent pictures, where it is offensive because more glaring. Those masters sacrificed, if it be a sacrifice, something to repose--repose is _the_ thing to be sacrificed according to the notions of too many of our modern schools. It is likewise singular, after all the falsehoods which he asserts the old masters to have painted, that he should speak of "imitation"--as their whole aim, their sole intention to deceive; and yet he describes their pictures as unlike nature in the detail and in the general as can be, strangely missing their object--deception.