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COLOUR STUDIES WITH THE MICROSCOPE 
By HENRY J. SLACK, F.G.S., Sec. R.M.S. 
A SYSTEMATIC application of the microscope to the arts of 
design may he strongly recommended from the extreme 
convenience with which ornamental forms or arrangements of 
colour may be brought under notice and compared with each 
other. It would take half-a-dozen lectures, or a good-sized and 
richly-illustrated volume to do anything like justice to the 
subject ; but in the present paper a few hints may be given, 
more especially relating to the employment of the instrument 
in the study of colour, with a view to the appreciation of the 
principles by which beautiful results may be ensured. Colour 
may be studied apart from form , so far as its scientific aspects 
are concerned; but in connexion with art the two should be 
considered together, as the best results can only be obtained 
when the eye is satisfied with respect to both. Until men and 
women are made upon a much more uniform pattern than at 
present — a thing neither probable nor desirable — there will be 
considerable diversities of taste both for form and colour ; but 
there will still be sufficiently broad and general agreements 
amongst cultivated persons to enable certain canons to be estab- 
lished and rules laid down. We find in architecture that no pre- 
ference for Gothic over Greek, or Italian over Elizabethan, prevents 
the partisans of all from agreeing upon fundamental principles, 
which are, however, very frequently violated, either from want 
of culture in the architect, or, from what is more common, his 
being compelled to work according to the requirements of the 
vulgar rich. The foundation of a good style in building is that 
the thing should be, and look to be, mechanically correct. A 
ponderous structure, apparently resting upon a sheet of glass, 
or upon nothing at all when seen from such a position that the 
glass is invisible, cannot be in good taste ; nor can so-called 
ornaments stuck on to walls or ceilings, and not in any way 
connected with their construction, be properly admitted. 
Analogous to the requisition for mechanical correctness in 
form, is the demand of a cultivated eye for a disposition of 
