136. But if, on the one hand, mere abstract excellence of color be thus coldly regarded, it is equally certain that no work ever attains enduring celebrity which is eminently deficient in this great respect. Color cannot be indifferent; it is either beautiful and auxiliary to the purposes of the picture, or false, froward, and opposite to them. Even in the painting of Nature herself, this law is palpable; chiefly glorious when color is a predominant element in her working, she is in the next degree most impressive when it is withdrawn altogether: and forms and scenes become sublime in the neutral twilight, which were indifferent in the colors of noon. Much more is this the case in the feebleness of imitation; all color is bad which is less than beautiful; all is gross and intrusive which is not attractive; it repels where it cannot inthrall, and destroys what it cannot assist. It is besides the painter's peculiar craft; he who cannot color is no painter. It is not painting to grind earths with oil and lay them smoothly on a surface. He only is a painter who can melodize and harmonize _hue_--if he fail in this, he is no member of the brotherhood. Let him etch, or draw, or carve: better the unerring graver than the unfaithful pencil--better the true sling and stone than the brightness of the unproved armor. And let not even those who deal in the deeper magic, and feel in themselves the loftier power, presume upon that power--nor believe in the reality of any success unless that which has been deserved by deliberate, resolute, successive operation. We would neither deny nor disguise the influences of sensibility or of imagination, upon this, as upon every other admirable quality of art;--we know that there is that in the very stroke and fall of the pencil in a master's hand, which creates color with an unconscious enchantment--we know that there is a brilliancy which springs from the joy of the painter's heart--a gloom which sympathizes with its seriousness--a power correlative with its will; but these are all vain unless they be ruled by a seemly caution--a manly moderation--an indivertible foresight. This we think the one great conclusion to be received from the work we have been examining, that all power is vain--all invention vain--all enthusiasm vain--all devotion even, and fidelity vain, unless these are guided by such severe and exact law as we see take place in the development of every great natural glory; and, even in the full glow of their bright and burning operation, sealed by the cold, majestic, deep-graven impress of the signet on the right hand of Time. SAMUEL PROUT.[20]