108 



THE OPAL SEA 



The mist 

 fell as n 

 creator of 

 color- 

 beauty. 



Lunar 

 rainbowa. 



dream-like, is always a potent source of beauty. 

 And of mystery. How cunningly Turner used 

 it to throw a glamour and a charm about his 

 towers and turrets and cities by the sea ! How 

 cleverly and yet how truly Monet, in his 

 Thames pictures, revealed the beauties of sun- 

 light by filtering them through this same veil- 

 ing, this same beautiful mist of the morning! 

 As for Claude Lorraine, whose name our Eng- 

 lish friends still invoke as though no modern 

 had ever reached up to him, save Turner, what 

 charm would his classic bays and harbors pos- 

 sess if it were not for their golden sea-mist of 

 sunset ! 



And what pictures, never painted by master 

 ancient or modern, are to be seen by the 

 weather rail at night when the lunar rainbow 

 with its arch of subtle light-and-dark follows 

 on the ship's beam, when the purple water 

 flashes through the patches of the mist, and 

 overhead the moon is like a silver disk, the 

 stars like phosphorescent points ! The summer 

 nights upon the vEgean when the small island 

 steamer sweeps you past Syrian ships becalmed 

 — their hulls lost in the low-lying vapors, their 

 sails looming above the drifts into the white 

 moonlight — are never to be forgotten. They 

 are only impressions of intangible light and 



