SEA, SKY, AND DOWN. 101 



with pale hues, flushes over a rich violet, soon again 

 overlaid with orange, and succeeded in its turn by a 

 deep red glow — a glow which looks the deeper the 

 more it is gazed at, like a petal of peony. There are 

 no fair faces in the street now, they are all brunettes, 

 fair complexions and dark skins are alike tinted by the 

 sunset ; they are all swarthy. On the sea a dull red- 

 ness reaches away and is lost in the vapour on the 

 horizon'; eastwards great vapours, tinged rosy, stand up 

 high in the sky, and seem to drift inland, carrying the 

 sunset with them ; presently the atmosphere round the 

 houses is filled with a threatening light, like a great 

 fire reflected over the housetops. It fades, and there 

 is nothing left but a dark cloud at the western horizon, 

 tinted blood-red along its upper edge. Next morning 

 the sun rises, a ball of orange amid streaks of scarlet. 



But sometimes the sunset takes other order than 

 this, and after the orange there appears a rayed 

 scarlet crown, such as one sees on old coins — rays of 

 scarlet shoot upward from a common centre above 

 where the sun went down. Sometimes, instead of 

 these brilliant hues, there is the most delicate shadino- 

 of pearly greys and nameless silver tints, such tints as 

 might be imagined were the clouds like feathers, the 

 art of which is to let the under hue shine through the 

 upper layer of the plumage. Though not so gaudy or 

 at first so striking, these pearl-greys, and silvers, and 

 delicate interweaving of tints are really as wonderful, 

 being graduated and laid on with a touch no camel's 

 hair can approach. Sometimes, again, the sunset shows 

 a burnished sky, like the surface of old copper burnt 

 or oxidized — the copper tinted with rose, or with rose 



