48 
young man, was skating on the river on a bitterly cold 
winter’s day. “I had been on the ice,” says he, “since 
early morning, and was therefore, when my mother later in 
the day drove up to admire the scene, being only lightly 
clad, almost frozen. She sat in her carriage wrapped in a red 
velvet fur mantle, which, held together in front with thick 
gold lace and tassels, looked magnificent. e Give me, dear 
mother, your fur cloak,’ said I without much consideration, 
‘ I am fearfully cold.’ She, too, did not consider long, and 
the next moment I had put on the cloak, which reaching 
nearly to my feet, being of a purple colour, trimmed with 
sable and ornamented with gold, suited very well the brown 
fur cap which I wore.” Here it is evident that Goethe calls 
the same object first red, then purple, and yet Goethe was 
not colour-blind ; he wrote, as every one knows, a work on 
the theory of colours. 
4. Part of the vagueness and uncertainty attending the 
terminology of colour may be ascribed to a tendency we are 
all more or less liable to, that of describing colours in figu- 
rative and metaphorical terms. The habit, no doubt, arises 
from the pleasure we feel in comparing two objects, both of 
which are agreeable to the sense of sight. We speak of a 
girl having sky-blue eyes and cherry-red lips, whereas slate- 
coloured and brick-red would be more correct. How often 
we hear the expression, “he turned as white as a sheet,” 
whereas the human skin is never under any circumstances, 
even after death, as white as a sheet. To say “ he turned 
of a dirty yellowish- white,” would be nearer the truth, 
though the expression might be thought somewhat in- 
elegant. Poets and others speak of golden hair and silvery 
locks, but human hair though it may be bright, glistening, 
and so on, never reflects light in the manner peculiar to 
metals. Numerous examples of the same kind will occur 
to everyone. If, therefore, we meet in ancient authors with 
expressions relating to colour which seem exaggerated and 
