which mechanical superiority and physical qualifications have little to
do. Here the man stands alone,--the only medium between the ideal and
the outward world, wherefrom he must choose the signs which alone are
permitted to become the language of his expression. None can help him,
as before he was helped by the man whose success was the parent of his
own. Here is no longer copying.

In the first place, is to be found the limit of the palette. Confining
ourselves to the external, what, of all the infinitude of phenomena to
which the vision is related, so corresponds to the power of the palette
that it may become adequately representative thereof?

Passing over many minor points in which there seems to be an imperfect
relation between Nature's effects and those of pigments, we will briefly
refer to the great discrepancy occasioned by the luminosity of light. In
all the lower effects of light, in the illumination of Nature and the
revelation of colored surfaces, in the exquisite play and power of
reflected light and color, and in the depth and richness of these when
transmitted, we find a noble and complete response on the palette. But
somewhere in the ascending scale a departure from this happy relation
begins to be apparent. The _color_-properties of light are no longer
the first. Another element--an element the essential nature of which
is absorbed in the production of the phenomena of color--now asserts
itself. Hitherto the painter has dealt with light indirectly, through
the mediatorship of substances. The rays have been given to him, broken
tenderly for his needs;--ocean and sky, mountain and valley, draperies
and human faces, all things, from stars to violets, have diligently
prepared for him, as his demands have arisen, the precious light. And
while he has restrained himself to the representation of Nature subdued
to the limit of his materials, he has been victorious.