AUGUST 405 



Ruskin puts it in that beautiful chapter on the truth of 

 colour in the first volume of ' Modern Painters' : ' When 

 Nature herself takes a colouring fit, and does something 

 extraordinary — something really to exhibit her power — 

 she has a thousand ways and means of rising above her- 

 self, 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 con- 

 ceived 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 impercepti- 

 bly 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 pic- 



