131. We think we cannot have erred in concluding from these scattered passages that Mr. Eastlake supposes the brilliancy of the high lights of the earlier schools to be attributable to the under-power of the white ground. This we admit, so far as that ground gave value to the transparent flesh-colored or brown preparation above it; but we doubt the transparency of the highest lights, and the power of any white ground to add brilliancy to opaque colors. We have ourselves never seen an instance of a _painted brilliant_ light that was not loaded to the exclusion of the ground. Secondary lights indeed are often perfectly transparent, a warm hatching over the under-white; the highest light itself may be so--but then it is the white ground itself subdued by transparent _darker_ color, not supporting a light color. In the Van Eyck in the National Gallery all the brilliant lights are loaded; mere white, Mr. Eastlake himself admits, was always so; and we believe that the flesh-color and carnations are painted with color as _opaque_ as the white head-dress, but fail of brilliancy from not being _loaded enough_; the white ground beneath being utterly unable to add to the power of such tints, while its effect on more subdued tones depended in great measure on its receiving a transparent coat of warm color first. This _may_ have been sometimes omitted, as stated at p. 389; when it was so, we believe that an utter loss of brilliancy must have resulted; but when it was used, the highest lights must have been raised from it by opaque color as distinctly by Van Eyck as by Rubens. Rubens' Judgment of Paris is quoted at [p. 388] as an example of the best use of the bright gesso ground:--and how in that picture, how in all Rubens' best pictures, is it used? Over the ground is thrown a transparent glowing brown tint, varied and deepened in the shadow; boldly over that brown glaze, and into it, are struck and painted the opaque gray middle tints, already concealing the ground totally; and above these are loaded the high lights like gems--note the sparkling strokes on the peacock's plumes. We believe that Van Eyck's high lights were either, in proportion to the scale of picture and breadth of handling, as loaded as these, or, in the degree of their thinness, less brilliant. Was then his system the same as Rubens'? Not so; but it differed more in the management of middle tints than in the lights: the main difference was, we believe, between the careful preparation of the gradations of drawing in the one, and the daring assumption of massy light in the other. There are theorists who would assert that their system was the same--but they forget the primal work, with the point underneath, and all that it implied of transparency above. Van Eyck secured his drawing in dark, then threw a pale transparent middle tint over the whole, and recovered his _highest_ lights; all was _transparent_ except these. Rubens threw a