combinations of the primaries, and is rarely offended at their disunion, disproportion, or discordance.

1074. Thus that which is most harmonious or beautiful to the merely sensible or uncultivated eye, is least so to the cultivated or intellectualized eye: to the first the most simple and distinct relations are suited, to the latter the more comprehensive and refined. There is a bound, however, to this refinement, in which the relations of the primaries, as principles, become so remote or complex, that indistinguishableness ensues, and this bound is sameness, or monotony.

1075. To what extent the power of vision may reach in this respect, or how far Nature goes, may be difficult to determine; but it is evident in her works that she delights most in the latter harmonies, and distributes the former with a sparing hand. Consonant, also, to this, has been the practice of the best colourists in steering clear from the extremes of crudeness and monotony; accordingly, in nature and the best pictures, the broad harmony of landscape, &c., lie in the latter relations, while the more confined harmonies of flowers, &c., belong to the former.

1076. By thus refining upon the simple unity or accordance of the primary triad, we have arrived at the three genera of harmony in colours; and it is remarkable that the musical genera of the Greeks were three, distinguished, also, by a similar characteristic of refinement, and requiring a like

cultivation of perception. There is, indeed, as we have seen, a boundless analogy by which the sciences and arts are connected, whence they mutually reflect light upon each other; and the relation in this respect is so intimate among the sensible arts, that it would alone lead us to suspect in them a natural identity of form.

1077. In no instance is this more evident than in what we have pointed out of the corresponding relations of the primary colours, and the three notes, C E G, which constitute the common chord in music; and as it is by the inversion of this common chord that the musician obtains the other two perfect consonances, E G C and G C E, so, by a similar transposition, we get in the three sides of the coloured triangle in the above diagram three perfect consonances of colours.

1078. Musicians, it is true, denominate the two inversions imperfect concords, not as dissatisfying the ear, but as unfit to commence or terminate a composition; in which respect colours also resemble sounds, since the inversions of the primary triad, though perfect in consonance or system, are imperfect in series.

1079. Every simple interval in music, which the Greeks called a Diastem, or an interval of two sounds, to distinguish it from a System or compound interval, is a discord; but some compound intervals are concords, and some are discords,

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while unisons are held to be concordant: all of which holds correspondingly in Chromatics, wherein simple intervals are discords, although they may be tolerated by a sort of appogiatura, blending or breaking into intermediate hues or shades. Compound intervals are concordant or discordant, and unisons and octaves, joining depth with brilliancy, or chiaroscuro, in the same tone, are harmonious or concordant in Chromatics.

1080. Again: the chromatist has not only his melody and harmony, but he has also, if the variety of expanded quantities may be so expressed, his breves and minims, quavers and semiquavers, &c., or rhythmus. And these relations of colours answer to that which in their music the antients called harmonica and rhythmica theoretically, or melopœia and rhythmopæia practically.

1081. Nor are these coincidences, nor in particular those which refer to the music of antient Greece, undeserving of the notice of the learned musician, as a clue, perhaps, to the restoration of the lost genera. We therefore recommend them to his attention, it being beside our design to speculate concerning the lost arts of antiquity; suffice it, that the examples we possess of Grecian arts justify our belief of the excellence of performances which are known to us only by their reputation nor ought we to lose sight of the remarkable tradition, that it was by the principle of analogy

(whatever they meant by it, or wherever they got it,) that the Greeks carried the arts to the very acme of perfection.

1082. To these coincidences of Chromatics and Harmonics many others might be added, but the uniformity of their structure has been rendered sufficiently apparent; yet, if there be any perplexity or obscurity therein, it arises chiefly from the necessity of employing those terms in common which belong properly to these sciences as distinct, but which a little discrimination of the reader will make clear. We may, therefore, conclude; remarking, only, that it is evident colours have a science as distinct from any necessary association with that of figures or plastic forms, as that of musical sounds is from figurative language or the images of poetry, notwithstanding they are similarly connected. Hence, the field in which the chromatist may exercise his genius is as extensive as that of the musician, much of whose science we have already anticipated, and to which science we proceed.