April — Leaves of Bramble. 119 



whilst in the nearest foregrounds the last year's leaves 

 of the bramble are still visibly an element in the land- 

 scape, with their stains of red and passages of russet and 

 dark green. Sometimes you may get a few such leaves 

 between you and the morning sunshine, and then, if the 

 coloring of them happen to be favorable, you will see 

 that which in all wild Nature comes nearest to the effect 

 of a painted window. The middle of the leaflet will 

 probably still retain some of the original green coloring 

 matter (being nearest to the midrib from which the sap 

 was supplied), and its edges will be quite brown and 

 dead ; but between these there will be gradations from 

 light crimson to deep purple, precisely of that quality 

 which Jean Cousin and his school successfully tried for 

 in their glass-painting — that is, color intensified to the 

 utmost by light unequally transmitted. The same prin- 

 ciple is well known also to oil-painters, and can be (by 

 means of glazing) to a great extent acted upon in their 

 art, though not so strikingly as in glass-painting. When 

 this principle is absolutely neglected or ignored, as it is 

 in vulgar stained glass, in which a flat pane of blue is 

 put by the side of other flat little panes of yellow or red, 

 the color is never really luminous, nor can it be.* 



Besides the jewels of transparence, last year has 

 bequeathed to us much deathly opacity, which lingers 



* It does not follow, however, that to obtain luminous quality 

 in color each piece of glass should necessarily have a gradation 

 painted upon it. Luminous quality may also be obtained by the 

 graduated arrangement of small fragments, which, taken separately, 

 had no gradation; in a word, by glass arranged on the principle of 

 mosaic. 



