VAEIETIES OF COLOTJES. 85 



thousand leagues, at a thousand years' distance, -vre coidd 

 speak of these coloui-s with rigid precision, because every 

 one would have his gamut-type before his eyes. 



You have already borrowed from flowere the .word rose; 

 but you have no words to express the shades of the rose. 

 Well, you may find them at once in the different varieties of 

 roses : the hundred-leaved rose, the rose of the four seasons, 

 the Bengal rose, are not of the same rose colour, and the 

 blossom of the peach-tree and that of the hyacinth have each 

 particular shades. 



And white, now; how can you express the shades of white? 

 Look out of the window, a good way off; there ai-e four trees 

 covered with white blossoms, — a, cherry-tree, a plum-tree, an 

 apricot, and an almond-tree : I declare to you, that far as 

 I am from them — a distance at which their form is invisible 

 and at which their colours alone can be perceived — I should 

 never confound these four trees with others whose blossoms 

 are white, although of a very different shade. Give me, in 

 the same way, an exact tint of a rose-colour or white, and 

 I will tell you to what flower it belongs; but to do so, it 

 must not be a strange thing to meet with a man who has 

 deigned to pay some attention to the magnificence with which 

 the earth is covered. 



Language is at least equally poor in its attempts to express 

 scents; but there I am at a pause; I am not nearly so well 

 up in sweet smells as in colours. 



Now here, my friend, is a letter which must have been 

 very ennuyante, for readers to whom nature has not given, 

 with regard to colours, a susceptibility equal to mine. 



