colour not very bright, in substance moderately hard, and smooth in texture. It is variously a bluish or gray coaly clay combined with yellow oxide of iron or yellow ochre. Although not a bright, it is a very durable pigment, being unaffected by strong light and impure air, and combining with other colours without injury. It has not much body, is semitransparent, and dries well in oil. There are varieties of this pigment; but the green earths which have copper for their colouring matter are, although generally of brighter colours, inferior in their other qualities, and are not true terre-vertes.

The greens called Verona green, and Verdetto, or holy green, are similar native pigments of a warmer colour. These greens are found in the Mendip Hills, France, Italy, and the Island of Cyprus.

III. CHROME GREENS, commonly so called, are compound pigments, of which chrome yellow is the principal colouring substance. These are also called Brunswick green, &c. and are compounds of chromate of lead with Prussian and other blue colours, constituting fine greens to the eye, suitable to some of the ordinary purposes of mechanic art; but for obvious reasons before given are unfit for fine art. See Chrome Yellow. There is, however, a true chrome green, or Native green, the colouring matter of which is the pure oxide of chrome, and, being free from lead, is durable both against the action of the sun's light and impure air. It is of various degrees of transparency or opacity, and of several hues more or less warm or cool, which are all rather fine than brilliant greens, and afford pure and durable tints. True Chrome greens neither give nor receive injury from other pigments, and are eligible for either water or oil painting, in the latter of which they dry rapidly. The green of the Definitive Scale, Pl. 1. fig. 3. is of this latter kind.

IV. COBALT GREENS. There are two pigments of this denomination, the one a compound of cobalt blue and chromic yellow, which partakes of the qualities of those pigments, and may be formed on the palette,-the other, an original pigment prepared immediately from cobalt, which is of a pure but not very powerful green colour, and durable both in water and oil, in the latter of which it dries well.

V. 1. COPPER GREEN is the appellation of a class rather than of an individual pigment, under which are comprehended Verdigris, Verditer, Malachite Mineral green, Green bice, Scheele's green, Schweinfurt or Vienna green,

R

Emerald green, true Brunswick green, green Lake, Mountain green, African green, French green, Saxon green, Persian green, Patent green, green, Marine green, Olympian green, &c.; and old authors mention others under the names of individuals who prepared them, such are Verde de Barildo, &c.

The general characteristics of these greens are, brightness of colour, well suited to the purposes of house-painting, but not adapted to the modesty of nature in fine art. They have considerable permanence, except from the action of damp and impure air, which ultimately blacken them, to which shade they have also a tendency by time. They have a good body, and dry well in oil, but, like the whites of lead, are all deleterious substances. We will particularize the principal sorts:

2. VERDIGRIS, or Viride Eris, is of two kinds, common or impure, and crystallized or Distilled Verdigris, or more properly refined verdigris. They are both acetates of copper, of a bright green colour inclining to blue. They are the least permanent of the copper greens, soon fading as water-colours by the action of light, &c. and becoming first white and ultimately black by damp and foul air. In oil verdigris is durable with respect to light and air, but moist and impure air change its colour, and cause it to effloresce or rise to the surface through the oil. It dries rapidly, and might be useful as a siccific with other greens or very dark colours. In varnish it stands better, but is not upon the whole a safe or eligible pigment, either alone or compounded. Vinegar dissolves it, and the solution is used for tinting maps, &c.

3. GREEN VERDITER is the same in substance as blue verditer, which is converted into green verditer by boiling. This pigment has the common properties of the copper greens above mentioned, and is sometimes called Green Bice.

4. EMERALD GREEN is the name of a new copper green upon a terrene base. It is the most vivid of this tribe of colours, being rather opaque and powerfully reflective of light, and appears to be the most durable pigment of its class. Its hue is not common in nature, but well suited for gems or glazing upon. It works well in water, but difficultly in oil, and dries badly therein.

5. MINERAL GREEN is the commercial name of green lakes, prepared from the sulphate of copper. These vary in hue and shade, have all the properties before ascribed to copper greens, and afford the best common greens, and, not being liable to change of colour by oxygen and light, stand the weather well, and are excellent for the use of the house-painter, &c.; but are less eligible in the nicer works of fine art, having a tendency to darken by time and foul air.

6. MOUNTAIN GREEN is a native carbonate of copper, combined with a white earth, and often striated with veins of mountain blue, to which it bears the same relation that green verditer does to blue verditer, nor does it differ from these and other copper greens in any property essential to the painter. The Malachite, a beautiful copper ore, employed by jewellers, is sometimes called mountain green, and Green bice is also confounded therewith, being similar substances and of similar use as pigments.

VI. SCHEELE'S GREEN is a compound oxide of copper and arsenic, named after the justly celebrated chemist who discovered it. It is variously of a beautiful light warm green colour, opaque, permanent in itself and in tint with white lead, but must be used cautiously with Naples yellow, by which it is soon destroyed. Schweinfurt green is the name of a fine preparation of the same kind. Both these pigments are less affected by damp and impure air than the simple copper greens, and are therefore in these respects rather more eligible colours than copper greens in general.

VII. PRUSSIAN GREEN. The pigment celebrated under this name is an imperfect prussiate of iron, or Prussian blue, in which the yellow oxide of iron superabounds, or to which yellow tincture of French berries has been added, and is not in any respect superior as a pigment to the compounds of Prussian blue and yellow ochre.

VIII. SAP GREEN, or Verde Vessie, is a vegetal pigment prepared from the juice of the berries of the buckthorn, the green leaves of the woad, &c. It is usually preserved in bladders, and is thence sometimes called Bladder Green; when good it is of a dark colour and glossy fracture, extremely transparent, and of a fine natural green colour. Though much employed as a water-colour without gum, which it contains naturally, it is a very imperfect pigment, disposed to attract the moisture of the atmosphere, and to mildew; and, having little durability in water-colour painting, and less in oil, it is not eligible in the one, and is totally useless in the other.

Similar pigments, prepared from coffee-berries, and called Venetian and emerald greens, are of a colder colour, very fugitive, and equally defective as pigments.

IX. INVISIBLE GREEN. See Olive Pigments.

CHAP. XIV.

OF PURPLE.

Over his lucid arms

A military vest of purple flow'd
Livelier than Melibaan, or the grain

Of Sarra, worn by kings and heroes old.

MILTON.

PURPLE, the third and last of the secondary colours, is composed of red and blue, in the proportions of five of the former to eight of the latter, which constitute a perfect purple, or one of such a hue as will neutralize, and best contrast a perfect yellow in the proportions of thirteen to three, either of surface or intensity. It forms, when mixed with its co-secondary colour green, the tertiary colour olive; and when mixed with the remaining secondary orange, it constitutes in like manner the tertiary colour russet.

It

is the coolest of the three secondary colours, and the nearest also in relation to black or shade; in which respect, and in never being a warm colour, it resembles blue. In other respects also purple partakes of the properties of blue, which is its archeus or ruling colour; hence it is to the eye a retiring colour, which reflects light little, and declines rapidly in power in proportion to the distance at which it is viewed, and also in a declining light. It is owing to its being the mean between black and blue that it becomes the most retiring of all positive colours. Nature employs this hue beautifully in landscape, as a sub-dominant, in harmonizing the broad shadows of a bright sunshine ere the light declines into deep orange or red. Girtin, who saw Nature as she is, and painted what he saw, delighted in this effect of sun-light and shadow; but when purple is employed as a

ruling colour in flesh, or otherwise, its effect is in general too cold, or verges on ghastliness, and is to be as much avoided as the opposite extreme of viciousness in colouring stigmatized as foriness.

Yet, next to green, purple is the most generally pleasing of the consonant colours; and has been celebrated as a regal or imperial colour, as much perhaps from its rareness in a pure state, as from its individual beauty. It is probable, nevertheless, that the famed Tyrian purple was nearer to the rose, or red, than the purple of the moderns, in which inclination of hue this colour takes the names of crimson, &c., as it does those of violet, lilac, &c. when it inclines toward its other constituent, blue; which latter colour it serves to mellow, or follows well into shade.

The contrast, or harmonizing colour of purple, is yellow on the side of light and the primaries; and it is itself the harmonizing contrast of the tertiary citrine on the side of shade, and less perfectly so of the semi-neutral brown.

As purple, when inclining toward redness, is a regal and pompous colour, it has been used in mythological representations to distinguish the robe of Jupiter the king of Gods, and in general also as a mark of sacerdotal superiority in its effects on the mind it partakes principally, however, of the powers of its archeus, or ruling colour, blue, and is hence a highly poetical colour, stately, dignifying, sedate, and grave; soothing in its lights, and saddening in its shades: accordingly it contributes to these sentiments under the proper management of the painter and the poet, as it does also popularly in its use in court mournings, and other circumstances of state: hence the poets sing of " purple state."

The rhapsodists of Greece often used to recite in a theatrical manner, not only with proper gestures, but in colours suitable to their subject; and when they thus acted the Odyssey of Homer, were dressed in a purple-coloured robe, åλoupy, to represent the sea-wanderings of Ulysses: but when they acted the Iliad they wore one of a scarlet colour, to signify the bloody battles described in that poem. Upon their heads they wore a crown of gold, and held in their hands a wand made of the laurel tree, which was supposed to have the virtue of exciting poetic raptures. See Sydenham on the Io of Plato, note 8. Eustath. on the Iliad, B. 1. and the Scholiast on Hesiod, Theog. vs. 50.

Of the various expression of purple, and its hues, we have the following examples from the poets:

The pale violet's dejected hue.

AKENSIDE.