Every standard scheme of colour, Egyptian, Greek, or what not, is based upon an intuitive knowledge of the rules of harmony; and such knowledge is best studied at the fountain-head, Nature. Remember, a landscape is the finest of all backgrounds - perfect in itself; and when life is introduced, still perfect: perfect from afar, perfect on close scrutiny. And from nature we learn that it is not the poverty or simplicity, but the variety and closeness of invention, which makes a work grand. Thus in the colour-art as in the sister art, music, we may attain the most varied effects by happy combinations. The rules of art are wide, not narrow, and will admit all tastes; hence, many schools contribute to the general fund of beauty, all good in their way, and yet a certain kind may appeal to this mind or that, more than another kind; for individual opinion must be admitted to be free, even where it rejects 'the better part.'

'No colour harmony', says Ruskin somewhere, ' is of high order, unless involving indescribable tints;' and it has also become an axiom that to satisfy the eye and produce harmony of colour, the presence of all the three primaries 1 - blue, yellow and red - is required, either pure or in combination. But this does not mean that big masses of blue, red, and yellow are ever to be placed in discordant juxtaposition - only that these colours, in some fit degree or tint, are to relieve the eye from surfeit. For uniting pure colours, the quieter greys, browns, or any of the tertiaries, with all their respective tones of intensity (for which see Redgrave's or any other manual), are invaluable. I have here shown by a diagram what is meant by primary, secondary, and tertiary colours, and every colour admitted in a noticeable mass should be balanced somewhere by its complementary (which stands opposite it in the diagram). Without due balance colour, like form, leaves an uncomfortable impression on the eye, and what constitutes balance I have defined elsewhere (p. 203). A little red goes as far in producing an effect as a good deal of blue; a still smaller quantity of yellow produces as great a one.

The proportions have been defined as 8 blue, 5 red, 3 yellow; still, the nicely calculated rules of colour as laid down by the profession might be rigidly adhered to with a very unpleasant effect, and a fine effect is sometimes got in defiance of rules; therefore no manual is as safe as an 'eye for colour.' This is a faculty so happy and so subtle that it may fairly be called a sixth sense. And a room, or a dress, arranged after that true natural instinct will always be beautiful, however surprising; the boldest combinations will 'look right,' for they will always be found to be based on observation of Nature.

1 Those who do not understand the technical terms in Art may be glad to know that the mixture of the primary colours makes the secondary colours; the mixture of the secondaries forms the tertiary hues; thus -

Complementary Colour?, as seen on diagram below.

a - a b- b c - c etc.

Fig. i. - Diagram of colour.

Precise and immutable as are, no doubt, those natural laws, they are still in process of discovery, and the loving study of a sweet pea or a daisy, for its grace of fibre, its strength of elastic build, its dainty contrasts of purple and white and red, will teach us more than all the manuals, perhaps more than all the picture galleries. I shrink, myself, from dissections and skeletons, even of the rainbow, for if we are not born with an eye for beauty, they cannot give it us. No study of counterpoint can give us an ear for music, no spectrum analysis pleasure in a dragon-fly's mail. Watching Nature, practising combinations learnt from her, is the real school; and in all the finest decorative works we find the masses distributed in such a way as could have been derived only from the basis of art - Nature.

Stothard kept a collection of butterflies which he studied for hints upon colour and texture. Blake strolled out and questioned the flowers and dew-drops till every blade and grain had for him its fairy, its special voice. Some colour-students have kept birds' eggs for the same purpose; and every bit of ore, every shell, every feather has its own perpetual lesson for our eyes and minds if we will but open them. And valuable as are the rules of art, pressed from the experience of ages of thinkers, Nature will ofttimes deny them all, and send the primrose to prove that yellow and orange may mix, with or without light green - its blossom and leaf; or the lupin, that blue and lilac are a happy combination; or the tulip, that scarlet and crimson and white may be divided by faint blue; and half her kingdom to tell us that in spite of green being unpopular with the milliner and upholsterer, it is the colour above all others which 'goes' with all the rest - the peacemaker, on whom they all rely.

When we are planning out the picture we mean to live in, the room that we wish to make a background for the highest created animal, humanity, it is certainly worth while to take our best pains if art is anywhere important per se. And I am by no means sure that the total neglect of art-lore and the patient study of a flower or two will not result in something noble and beautiful, however unlike other people's work. One thing is certain, that a room where the main decorations are composed of the carefullest productions of antiquity - say, at least before 1700 - will be more easy to keep in harmony than a very modern room, however costly its ornaments, because colours were less shrewdly distilled, more cloudy and soft; and it will be more interesting, because the ornaments were made under the influence of comparative leisure and freedom; leisure to observe nature, leisure to reason from nature to art, leisure to conceive, and to work at the new-born idea until the workman got to love it, before sending it forth to the world.

Never was the saw of the wise king of Spain truer than now: ' Give me old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old books to read, and old friends to talk to:' when referred to house-decoration. The modern productions made after the old manner, as by Minton, Doulton, and at Valery, with laboriously dimmed tints and careful crookednesses, are as different from the real old things as a tame daisy is from a wild one - and always remind me of a very artful lady acting the wood-nymph, a sort of Venus in a bonnet and veil! There is no spontaneity in them, the effects don't come because they must, but because they are calculated on; so that, however well a thoroughly modern room is arranged, it wearies, and wants freshness.

The details of furniture are little less important, though they are certainly not more important, than dress, by reason of their intimate propinquity to ourselves. This must infallibly have been felt by students of beauty in all ages, and helped the formation of every school of art. The human surroundings react so continually upon the cultured mind that we are inclined to endorse the old Italian notion (at Italy's apex of culture) of a beautiful dress as a genuine element in the perfection of the individual; 1 and in old England Italian sentiment on

1 'Even the outward appearance of men and women and the habits of daily life were more perfect, more beautiful, and more polished than among the other nations of Europe. The dwellings of the upper classes fall rather within the province of the history of art, but we may note how far the castle and the city mansion in Italy surpassed in comfort, order, and harmony the dwellings of the northern noble. The style of dress varied so continually that it is impossible to make any complete comparison with the fashions of other countries, all the more because since the close of the fifteenth century imitations of the latter were frequent. The costumes of the time, as given us by the Italian painters, are the most convenient and most pleasing to the eye which were then to be found in Europe: but we cannot be sure if they present the prevalent fashion, or if they are faithfully reproduced by the artists. It is nevertheless beyond a doubt that nowhere was so much importance attached to dress as in Italy. The people was, and is, vain; and even serious men among it looked on a handsome and becoming costume as an element in the perfection of the individual.

At Florence, indeed, there was a brief period when dress was a purely personal matter and every man set the fashion for himself; and till far in the sixteenth century there were exceptional people who still had the courage to do so, and the majority at all events showed themselves capable of varying the fashion according to their individual tastes. It is a symptom of decline when Giovanni delle Casa warns his readers not to be this matter found some echo, as we may judge from Chaucer's emphatic notice of persons' dresses.

Furniture is a kind of dress, dress is a kind of furniture, which both mirror the mind of their owner and the temper of the age; which both minister to our comfort and culture, and they ought to be considered together.