LIGHT AND LIFE. 127 



ence light has on the system of the intellectual functions. 

 The soul finds in it the least deceiving of the consolations 

 it seeks for the eternal sadness of our destiny the bitter 

 melancholy of life. Thought, fettered and dumb in a dark 

 place, springs into freedom and spirit at evening, in a room 

 brilliant with light We cannot shun the sad moods 

 caused by gloomy and rainy weather, nor resist the impulse 

 of joy given by the spectacle of a brilliant day. Here we 

 must confess our slavery yet a slavery to be welcomed, 

 that yields only delights. And why should we not join in 

 the chorus of all animate and inanimate things, which, at 

 the touch of light, quiver, and thrill, and betray in a 

 thousand languages the magical, rapturous stimulus of that 

 contact ? By instinct, and spontaneously, we seek it 

 everywhere, always happiest when it is found. In some 

 sort, it suffices us. And what a part it plays, what a charm 

 it gives, in works of poetry and art ! 



This is not the place to unfold that attractive and 

 hardly-opened chapter of aesthetics to demonstrate the re- 

 lation between the atmosphere and art, by interrogating 

 the climates of the globe and the great masters of all ages, 

 not following a system of empirical analogies and far- 

 fetched suggestions, but led by strict physiology and rigid 

 optic laws. A charming picture would unfold in tracing 

 the countless and changeful aspects of the sky, and all the 

 caprices of light and air in their influence over the moral 

 and physical nature of painters, poets, and musicians. The 

 ever-varying face of the sun, the fires of dawn and sunset, 

 the opalescent play of air, the shimmer of twilight, the 

 blue, green, shifting hues and iridescent gleams of sea or 

 mountain all these things find a destined answer in the 

 inmost and unconscious ongrowings of life, as in the soul 

 of one who looks understandingly at Nature's works. In 

 it they reveal and transform themselves by subtilest thrills, 

 tender and creative. He who shall detect these shall 



