132. These passages open to us a series of questions far too intricate to be even cursorily treated within our limits. It is to be held in mind that one and the same quality of color or kind of brilliancy is not always the best; the phases and phenomena of color are innumerable in reality, and even the modes of imitating them become expedient or otherwise, according to the aim and scale of the picture. It is no question of mere authority whether the mixture of tints to a compound one, or their juxtaposition in a state of purity, be the better practice. There is not the slightest doubt that, the ground being the same, a stippled tint is more brilliant and rich than a mixed one; nor is there doubt on the other hand that in some subjects such a tint is impossible, and in others vulgar. We have above alluded to the power of Mr. Hunt in water-color. The fruit-pieces of that artist are dependent for their splendor chiefly on the juxtaposition of pure color for compound tints, and we may safely affirm that the method is for such purpose as exemplary as its results are admirable. Yet would you desire to see the same means adopted in the execution of the fruit in Rubens' Peace and War? Or again, would the lusciousness of tint obtained by Rubens himself, adopting the same means on a grander scale in his painting of flesh, have been conducive to the ends or grateful to the feelings of the Bellinis or Albert Duerer? Each method is admirable as applied by its master; and Hemling and Van Eyck are as much to be followed in the mingling of color, as Rubens and Rembrandt in its decomposition. If an award is absolutely to be made of superiority to either system, we apprehend that the palm of mechanical skill must be rendered to the latter, and higher dignity of moral purpose confessed in the former; in proportion to the nobleness of the subject and the thoughtfulness of its treatment, simplicity of color will be found more desirable. Nor is the far higher perfection of drawing attained by the earlier method to be forgotten. Gradations which are expressed by delicate execution of the _darks_, and then aided by a few strokes of recovered light, must always be more subtle and true than those which are struck violently forth with opaque color; and it is to be remembered that the handling of the brush, with the early Italian masters, approached in its refinement to drawing with the point--the more definitely, because the work was executed, as we have just seen, with little change or play of local color. And--whatever discredit the looser and bolder practice of later masters may have thrown on the hatched and penciled execution of earlier periods--we maintain that this method, necessary in fresco, and followed habitually in the first oil pictures, has produced the noblest renderings of human expression in the whole range of the examples of art: the best works of Raphael, all the glorious portraiture of Ghirlandajo and Masaccio, all the mightiest