218 THE STONES OF VENICE

would be right without it. For there is not any distinction between the artists of the inferior and the nobler schools more definite than this; that the first colour for the sake of realization, and the second realize for the sake of colour. I hope that, in the fifth chapter,¹ enough has been said to show the nobility of colour, though it is a subject on which I would fain enlarge whenever I approach it; for there is none that needs more to be insisted upon, chiefly on account of the opposition of the persons who have no eye for colour, and who, being therefore unable to understand that it is just as divine and distinct in its power as music (only infinitely more varied in its harmonies), talk of it as if it were inferior and servile with respect to the other powers of art:* whereas it is so far from being this, that wherever it enters it must take the mastery, and whatever else is sacrificed for its sake, it, at least, must be right. This is partly the case even with music: it is at our choice whether we will accompany a poem with music or not; but, if we do, the music must be right, and neither discordant nor inexpressive. The goodness

* Nothing is more wonderful to me than to hear the pleasure of the eye, in colour, spoken of with disdain as “sensual,” while people exalt that of the ear in music.² Do they really suppose the eye is a less noble bodily organ than the ear,-that the organ by which nearly all our knowledge of the external universe is communicated to us, and through which we learn to wonder and to love, can be less exalted in its own peculiar delight than the ear, which is only for the communication of the ideas which owe to the eye their very existence? I do not mean to depreciate music: let it be loved and reverenced as is just; only let the delight of the eye be reverenced more. The great power of music over the multitude is owing, not to its being less but more sensual than colour; it is so distinctly and so richly sensual, that it can be idly enjoyed; it is exactly at the point where the lower and higher pleasures of the senses and imagination are balanced; so that pure and great minds love it for its invention and emotion, and lower minds for its sensual power.

Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 138 (Vol. XII.); and The Three Colours of Pre- Raphaelitism, § 21. To Holman Hunt’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (1851) he called attention in his letter to the Times on May 30, 1851 (reprinted in Vol. XII.), and see Academy Notes, 1859, s. No. 329. For the “Huguenot,” see above, p. 59.]

¹ [i.e. of Vol. X. See p. 173.]

² [On the general relations of painting and music, see Ruskin’s early essay, Vol. I. pp. 267-285.]

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