COLOR IX NATURE AND ART* 



Is point of richness and gorgeousness of color, flowers are unrivalled. If we may be 

 allowed the simile, the ethereal phenomenon of color in them gains as much by a 

 union with earthly substance, as the spiritual nature of man is rendered more rich and 

 beautiful by the action of the sensuous emotions. But if we would see color in its 

 native purity and brilliance, even flowers must be put aside as too gross and earthy in 

 their structure. We must turn to gems, and fire, and light itself. Throw a few grains 

 of chemical stuff into a bright-burning fire, and see how the flame shoots aloft in a 

 wavy pyramid of purest emerald, — or change the substance, and lo ! undulating S2:)ires 

 of loveliest ruby or amethyst, — burning with so celestial a brilliance and transparency 

 as if freed from every tinge of earthy matter, and re-shining with the splendor of its 

 native skies. Or take the living light itself, and refract it through prisms of ciystal, 

 and see how the dissevered tremors of the ray reapper on the screen in a band of 

 many-hued light — red, blue, orange, green, yellow, and violet, blending into each 

 other by most delicate gradations, and all glowing with a richness which no mortal 

 pencil can copy. Substitute for this crystal prism, one of diamond, — suppose the 

 Koh-i-noor, that "mountain of light," used as a refractor of the sunbeams — as a 

 breaker-up of the symmetry of the solar ray, — and then imagine how brilliant would 

 be the spectral colors thus produced. The lustre of the diamond, the topaz, the ruby, 

 the emerald, the amethyst, is well known ; but how comes that lustre which so distin- 

 guishes them from other substances ? It is because they, of all earthly substances, are 

 the most ethereal in their structure, and hence vibrate and sparkle most readily in 

 unison with the solar rays. Take a diamond out of the sunlight into a dark room, and 

 you will see it still lustrous for a few moments, because its particles are still vibrating. 

 All substances — air, water, wood, and rock — consist of identically the same atoms, 

 only variously arranged, each possessing different qualities according to the closeness 

 and form in which the particles of their molecules arrange themselves. Thus, carbon,f 

 when in its amorphous state, is charcoal ; when crystalised in prisms, it becomes black 

 and opaque graphite ; and when crystalised in octohedrons, it is etherealised into the 

 limpid and transparent diamond. Gems, in truth, are of all earthly substances the 

 most similar in atomic structure to the ether — to that pure and subtle fluid pervading 

 all space, which gives birth to the lightning, and whose vibrations are heat and light. 

 They are formed in the veins of the rock by the slow and continuous action of electric 

 currents, which, in the lapse of ages, gradually alter the arrangement of the ultimate 

 atoms of the rock, crystalizing them in forms congenial to their own ethereal structure. 

 Science can imitate in some degree this rarest and most beautiful of nature's processes. 

 "There is strong presumptive evidence," says Mrs. Somerville, "of the influence of the 



• From Blacl-irof^d''s Magazine. 



t We do not think that the truth of the Atomic Theory admits of argument. It is irrefragably demonstrated Ijy 

 the pure light of reason, and it has now been all but demonstrated according to the Baconian system of experi- 

 ment Already some of our most positive and practical inquirers confess themselves within an ace of acce])ting Uie 

 doctrine. Professor Faraday says: "The philosopher ends by asking himself these questi 'iis,— in what does 

 chemical identity consist? — whether the so-called chemical elements may not be, after all, mere allotropic condi- 

 tions of purer universal essence?— whether, to renew the speculations of the alchemist, metals may be > : ly so many 

 mutati ns of each other, l>y the power of science naturally convertible ? There was a time when this fuiidamcntul 

 doctrine of the alchemists was oppose I lo known (fancied ?) analogies ; it is now no longer opposed to them, but only 

 8 m stages beyoud their present development." — Lectures, p. 105-6. 



