396 MORE POT-POURRI 



ordinary something really to exhibit her power she has 

 a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but 

 incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability 

 of colour are in these sunsets among the high clouds. I 

 speak especially of the moments before the sun sinks, 

 when his light turns pure rose-colour, and when this light 

 falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of 

 inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapour which 

 would in common daylight be pure snow-white, and which 

 give therefore fair field to the tone of light. There is then 

 no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity of 

 the hues assumed. The whole sky from the zenith to the 

 horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea of colour and 

 fire ; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple 

 and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson and purple 

 and scarlet, and colours for which there are no words in 

 language and no ideas in the mind things which can only 

 be conceived while they are visible the intense hollow 

 blue of upper sky melting through it all, showing here 

 deep and pure and lightless; there modulated by the 

 filmy, formless body of the transparent vapour, till it is 

 lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold.' All this, and 

 indeed much more, can be seen now and again from the 

 top of a high London house by those who have eyes to 

 see and a heart to appreciate. There are other effects - 

 white clouds sailing on pure blue, storm-clouds rising and 

 dispersing, and (in autumn) the sun lying like a little gold 

 ball on the mist, the lights glimmering through the fog in 

 the streets below, which are in darkness, whilst we dress 

 and breakfast without ever having to touch the switch 

 which produces the magic light. One more evening 

 picture is the new moon shining in at the windows, high 

 up and above a long, graduated space of evening sky and 

 a far mysterious purple vista, half town-lights, coming 

 through the darkness as in one of Whistler's harmonies, 



