NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 213 



room occupied by the melancholy workers was colored with yellow ochre. I 

 had the yellow ochre washed off and the walls and ceilings whitewashed. 

 The workers ever after felt more cheerful and healthy. After making this 

 discovery, I extended my observations to a number of smaller rooms and 

 garrets, and found, without exception, that the occupiers of tEe white rooms 

 were much more healthy than the occupiers of the yellow or buff colored 

 rooms, and wherever I succeeded in inducing the occupiers of the yellow 

 rooms to change the color for whitewash, I always found a corresponding 

 improvement hi the health and spirits of the occupiers. Correspondent 

 of the London Builder. 



THE PERCEPTION OF COLORS IX PICTURES. 



Every one knows that, owing to the peculiar relation that colors have to 

 each other, it is difficult, in arranging a selection of pictures, to prevent them 

 injuring one another: but the fact is not "so generally familiar, that the 

 impression produced by a color upon the eyes does not cease immediately the 

 eye is removed from the color." 



Mr. Sydney Smirke, A.K.A., has recently addressed a letter to Sir Charles 

 L. Eastlake, P.E.A., directing attention to this circumstance, and suggesting 

 a remedy. ''Let any one," says Mr. Smirke, "who wishes to receive a full 

 measure of enjoyment hi a picture gallery, hold hi his hand a tablet painted 

 of a neutral tint, on which to rest his eyes as. he passes from one picture to 

 another. Has his eye become inebriated by some florid colorist ? A draught 

 of the neutral tint on his tablet will sober it down, and bring it to the full use 

 of its senses. Has he been contemplating a glowing Italian sunset, 'A 

 Masquerade at Xaples ?' A glance at his tablet will prepare him for the 

 next picture, perhaps ' A Mist hi the Highlands.' By means of this tablet, 

 his eye becomes, on each occasion, a tabula rasa a cleansed palette, prepared 

 to meet a fresh assortment of colors. Its discriminating pow*s are restored ; 

 its bias corrected ; and thus each picture will stand on its own merits, unim- 

 paired by- the disturbing effects produced by the impression left behind by the 

 subject of the spectator's previous examination. A late eminent medical 

 writer on cookery recommended that a saline or other appropriate draught 

 should be administered to the cook on the eve of a banquet, so that his or 

 her taste might be purified and rendered so sensitive as to secure to each 

 entree and condiment the exact flavor that shah 1 best recommend it to the 

 fastidious gastronomer. Yery analogous to this would be the operation of 

 the proposed tablet upon the powers of the eye ; it would ' purge the visual 

 ray,' and so fit it to discern and appreciate the niceties of the colorist." 



In the case of landscapes, where it is desired that the eye should appreciate 

 tints of green, the water suggests that the reverse of the tablet a blank 

 page hi the catalogue, for example, where there is one should be colored 

 with a deep pure, but not bright red. Let the eye absorb a dose from this 

 side before it contemplates a landscape, and it will be at once found to have 

 been brought into a right condition for duly appreciating the artist's labor. 



