[14] Of all mediums in which colours can be mixed, paraffine is the safest; it is without chemical affinities, and is therefore well calculated to preserve pigments in their original condition.
[15] Cobalt, raw umber, and white make a magnificent grey, both in oil-colours, in tempera (powder-colours mixed with gum-water), and in distemper (powder-colours mixed with size).
[16] This museum is open free to the public.
[17] These will only be seen in very first-class shops.
[18] It may not be generally known, but nearly all our large manufacturing towns have, in connection with the Chamber of Commerce, a collection of Indian fabrics, filling several large volumes, which were prepared, at the expense of Government, under the superintendence of Dr. Forbes Watson, and which were given to the various towns on the condition that they be accessible to all persons who are trustworthy. Although these collections do not embrace the costly decorated fabrics, yet much can be learned from them, and the combinations of colour are always harmonious. A much larger collection is now in course of formation.
[19] The South Kensington Museum has a very interesting collection of art-works from China and Japan; but the latter are chiefly lent. It is a strange thing that the perfect works of the East are so poorly illustrated in this national collection, while costly, yea, very costly works of inferior character, illustrative of Renaissance art, swarm as thickly as flies in August. This can only be accounted for by the fact that the heads of the institution have a feeling for pictorial rather than decorative art, and the Renaissance ornament is that which has most of the pictorial element. To me, the style appears to owe its very weakness to this fact, for decorative art should be wholly ideal. Pictorial art is of necessity more or less imitative.
[20] Not the so-called colour or "chameleon" top sold in the toy-shops, but the more scientific toy procurable of opticians, together with the perforated discs of Mr. John Graham, M.R.C.S., of Tunbridge, Kent.