74 Colours and their Relations. [January, 



V. COLOURS AND THEIR RELATIONS. 

 By Mungo Ponton, F.R.S.E. 



Part I. 



'NL^J>~ 



,F all the objects of perception presented to our sight in 

 this beautiful world, none are more generally pleasing 

 than colours. The brilliancy of some, the delicacy of 

 others, their varieties of hue, of tint, and of shade, their 

 melodies, so to speak, and their harmonies, all combine to 

 render them sources of delight. 



What would the landscape be without colour ? Were it 

 composed of only lights and shades, it would lose far more 

 than half its beauty. It would be like a print compared 

 with the glowing tints of a Claude or a Turner. What 

 would be the plumage of the peacock without its gorgeous 

 colours — its brilliant lustre, its playful hues ? Let that 

 ghost-like variety which is colourless say. And the most 

 lovely of God's creatures — without colour, how would she 

 appear ? Where were the rosy cheeks, tokens of health 

 — the coral lips — the many-hued iris, that index of the soul, 

 with its deep yet lustrous browns, its ethereal blues, its 

 tender hazels, its sagacious greys, with its margin of lucid 

 white, the peculiar adornment of the human eye ? And the 

 wavy tresses too, with their tints in such strange sympathy 

 with those of the iris — either in pleasing harmony or not less 

 pleasing contrast. A woman of living alabaster, however 

 elegantly formed, would hardly send a thrill of warmth 

 through the frame of admiring man. 



W T hile colours thus afford pleasure to the eyes of the 

 multitude, they awaken in the mind of the philosopher, who 

 contemplates them with intelligent scrutiny, a still more 

 exquisite delight. For he perceives in them evidences of 

 most marvellous wisdom and skill, united to overflowing 

 goodness and benign sympathy. When he considers the 

 simplicity of the means, and the wondrous beauty and 

 variety of the effects, he becomes lost in amazement. He 

 feels himself, as it were, in the presence of a mind tran- 

 scendently powerful, wise, and benevolent, so that his soul 

 becomes filled with reverential, yet loving awe. For all these 

 phenomena, which produce in him the varied and plea- 

 surable perceptions of colour, are in themselves nothing 

 more than variations in the rate of infinitesimally minute 

 tremors, regulated by determinate mathematical laws. 



The nature and minuteness of these vibrations, and some 



