It never occurred to either painters or critics to judge the pictures as if they were in reality so many “delicately graduated tints on a wall-paper.” The color-sense was deficient. The pictures were judged by their composition, their subjects,--or, rather, not appreciated at all, but condemned, on account of their titles, which expressed exactly what the painter desired to convey,--namely, his attempts to produce harmonies in color independently of subject. So far from Whistler’s titles being absurd, they were so many frank attempts to tell the public what the painter was really trying to do. He might have been more obscure, like many a composer of music, and simply said, “_Opus_ I.,” or “_Opus_ XX.,” and so on. He did call three of his early pictures “Symphony in White, No. I.,” “Symphony in White, No. II.,” and “Symphony in White, No. III.;” but the first, a full-length figure, was also known as the “White Girl” of the “Salon des Refusés,” 1863; the second, a three-quarter length of a young girl in white, standing by a mantel, as “The Little White Girl;” while the third, with no other title, is of two girls in white. But for the most part he chose to describe each particular work as an arrangement of blue and silver, or black and gray, or flesh-color and brown, according to the predominating tones of the composition, thereby aiding the eye of the observer. There are beauties of form devoid of color; There are beauties of color devoid of form; There are beauties of form and color combined. Of the foregoing the first is familiar in sculpture, and the third is familiar in painting, but the second is scarcely observed at all, though color without form is found wherever color is used decoratively. The ordinary house-painter endeavors to secure agreeable effects by the mere arrangement of colors. The interior-decorator endeavors--for the most part with disastrous results--to secure agreeable effects by the mere distribution of color. In a crude way the house-painter, the sign-painter, the decorator, the dyer, the dress-maker, are all color-composers, their object being to produce harmonies in color quite irrespective of line and form. They know nothing about drawing, they know nothing about modelling, but they try to please the eye by color arrangements. To rightly understand the color-sense let us briefly consider the matter from its scientific side. * * * * * The ear has a range of musical sounds of from sixteen and one-half air-vibrations per second--the note of the lowest pipe of the great organ--to four thousand seven hundred and fifty-two vibrations per second, the highest note of the piccolo of the orchestra,--a range of about eight octaves.