Natures Tints. 77 



sculpturesque she could be ; and how, if she were so 

 minded, she could make simple purity and transparency 

 do the work of colour. A faint light, as of sunshine 

 left there, as if caught by some affinity with itself, like 

 some pleasing memory on a maiden's face, shines 

 through them ; the white is, after all, only a medium ; 

 and when you look carefully you find suggestions of 

 some faint indescribable colour, just as traces of veins 

 will be found under the fairest skin, and the bluer 

 under the fairer skin, as we all know from the phrase 

 " blue blood." Look closely into the purest, whitest- 

 seeming, and ethereal of snowdrops, and you will 

 perceive the most delicate tint of pink along the tips of 

 the leaves of the flower, as though some subtler kind of 

 blood were coursing there, and came the nearer to an 

 indescribably faint blush as you looked into it. Nature 

 does not do much in positive tones, but mingles and 

 combines them with the most artistic perception, if one 

 may say so, and delights in unexpected half-tones and 

 middle tints. 



In this lower part of my wood, intruding into the 

 middle distance, are thickly dotted clumps of wild 

 hazels, their tassels and buds shining greenly where 

 they are caught by the rays of the sun that steal 

 through the higher branches ; and in the opener spaces 

 wild anemones are thick as a carpet, with their soft 

 starlike flowers nodding over the green of their leaves ; 

 they are in reality of a pinkish shade, but look white 

 at a distance. Higher still, upon the smoother slope, 

 the blue hyacinths, as being abler to fight their own 

 battle, have possession, and are so thick that as you 

 look upon them from the lower ground, it might seem 

 as though a bit of sky had fallen on the earth and 

 remained there, the more that a kind of indescribable 



