22 OX COLOUR. Paet I. 



the beauty of their fancy designs. Among these I remember 

 an orange, into the surface of which they had cut a mosaic 

 pattern, leaving the orange rind as a ground, and rilling in 

 all the triangular and other hollows with various brilliant 

 colours; than which (comparing small things with great) 

 nothing could be found more harmonious in the mosaics of 

 Italy, or of Damascus, or on the walls of the Alhambra. 



17. In Europe it is among the Italians that we find the truest 

 perception of the harmony of colour; and it would be far 

 better for those in England who attempt coloured decoration 

 to follow the taste of Italy in this matter, than to adopt the 

 crude notions of some northern people. A blind predilection 

 for German examples is specially to be shunned ; for though 

 some modern Germans (as Hess and others) do possess a 

 proper appreciation of colour, the general character of their 

 coloured ornamentation is utterly at variance with harmony ; 

 and a dingy green is often put in juxtaposition with straw- 

 berry-and-cream colour, with an evident innocence (or per- 

 haps in obedience to some learned theory) which proves 

 how little they are aware of these two forming a most 

 disagreeable discord. An impression of some of these Grerman 

 mistakes may be obtained from the lower part of the great 

 staircase of the British Museum; from the windows of the 

 south aisle of Cologne cathedral, by Cornelius ; and from the 

 corridor and other parts of that frightful building the Pinako- 

 thek of Munich. The Italians, on the other hand, free from 

 any grass, or other, theory, and guided by the eye, adopt more 

 primary colours for ornamentation. They fearlessly use blues, 

 and reds, and yellows ; greens and other compound hues being 

 in smaller proportions ; and they obtain a balance of tone by 

 placing near the ground deeper, or fewer transparent, hues, 

 than in the upper parts of a wall, thereby giving an appear- 

 ance of lightness to the higher portions of the building.* 



* Examples of this may be mentioned in the Palazzo Martinengo at Brescia, 



