Snow, and the Quality of Whiteness. 113 
“ Yet,” he goes on to say, “ for all these accumulated 
associations with whatever is sweet, and honourable, 
and sublime, there lurks an illusive something in the 
innermost idea of this hue which strikes more of 
panic to the soul than the redness which affrights in 
blood.” He is no doubt right that there is a mys- 
terious illusive something affecting us in the thought 
of whiteness ; but, then, so illusive is it, and in most 
cases So transient in its effect, that only when we 
Snow at El Carmen. 
are told of it do we look for and recognize its 
existence in us. And this only with regard to cer- 
tain things, a distinction which Melville failed to 
see, this being his first mistake in his attempt to 
** solve the incantation of whiteness.’ His second 
and greatest error js in the assumption that the 
quality of whiteness, apart from the object it is 
associated with, has anything extranatural or super- 
I 
