in cities and in men, for which every modern eart had begun at last to thirst, and Scott's, in its freshness and power, of all men's, most earnestly.

And in this love of beauty, observe, that (as I said we might except) the love of color is a leading element, his healthy mind being incapable of losing, under any modern false teaching, its joy in brilliancy of hue. Though not so subtle a colorist as Dante, which, under the circumstances of the age, he could not be, he depends quite as much upon color for his power or pleasure. And, in general, if he does not mean to say much about things, the one character which he will give is color, using it with the most perfect mastery and faithfulness, up to the point of possible modern perception. For instance, if he has a sea-storm to paint in a single line, he does not, as a feebler poet would probably have done, use any expression about the temper or form of the waves; does not call them angry or mountainous. He is content to strike them out with two dashes of Tintoret's favorite colors

"The blackening wave is edged with white;

To inch and rock the seamews fly."

There is no form in this.

it gets rid of all form.

Nay, the main virtue of it is, that The dark raging of the sea-what form has that? But out of the cloud of its darkness those lightning flashes of the foam, coming at their terrible intervals -you need no more.

Again: where he has to describe tents mingled among oaks, he says nothing about the form of either tent or tree, but only gives the two strokes of color:

"Thousand pavilions, white as snow,
Chequered the borough moor below,
Oft giving way, where still there stood
Some relics of the old oak wood,

That darkly huge did intervene,
And tamed the glaring white with green."

Again of tents at Flodden:

"Next morn the Baron climbed the tower,

To view, afar, the Scottish power,

Encamped on Flodden edge.
The white pavilions made a show,

Like remnants of the winter snow,
Along the dusky ridge."

Again of trees mingled with dark rocks:

"Until, where Teith's young waters roll

Betwixt him and a wooded knoll,

That graced the sable strath with green.

The chapel of St. Bride was seen."

Again: there is hardly any form, only smoke and colǝr in his celebrated description of Edinburgh:

"The wandering eye could o'er it go,
And mark the distant city glow

With gloomy splendor red;

For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,

The morning beams were shed,

And tinged them with a lustre proud,
Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
Where the huge castle holds its state,

And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town!
But northward far with purer blaze,
On Ochil mountains fell the rays,

And as each heathy top they kissed,
It gleamed a purple amethyst.
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;
Here Preston Bay and Berwick Law:
And, broad between them rolled,
The gallant Frith the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float,

Like emeralds chased in gold."

I do not like to spoil a fine passage by italicizing it ; but observe, the only hints at form, given throughout, are in the somewhat vague words, "ridgy," "massy," "close," and "high" the whole being still more obscured by modern mystery, in its most tangible form of smoke. But the colors are all definite; note the rainbow band of them-gloomy or dusky red, sable (pure black), amethyst (pure purple), green, and gold-a noble chord throughout; and then, moved doubtless less by the smoky than the amethystine part of the group,

I need not multiply examples: the reader can easily trace for himself, through verse familiar to us all, the force of these color instincts. I will therefore add only two passages, not so completely known by heart as most of the poems in which they occur.

""Twas silence all. He laid him down

Where purple heath profusely strown,

And throatwort, with its azure bell.
And moss and thyme his cushion swell
There, spent with toil, he listless eyed
The course of Greta's playful tide;
Beneath her banks, now eddying dun,
Now brightly gleaming to the sun,
As, dancing over rock and stone,
In yellow light her currents shone,
Matching in hue the favorite gem
Of Albin's mountain diadem.

Then tired to watch the current play,
He turned his weary eyes away

To where the bank opposing showed

Its huge square cliffs through shaggy wood.

One, prominent above the rest,

Reared to the sun its pale grey breast;

Around its broken summit grew

The hazel rude, and sable yew;

A thousand varied lichens dyed
Its waste and weather-beaten side;
And round its rugged basis lay,
By time or thunder rent away,
Fragments, that, from its frontlet torn,

Were mantled now by verdant ‘horn.'

Note, first, what an exquisite chord of color is given in the succession of this passage. It begins with purple and blue; then passes to gold, or cairngorm color (topaz color); then to pale grey, through which the yellow passes into black; and the black, through broken dyes of lichen, into green. Note, secondly, what is indeed so manifest throughout Scott's landscape as hardly to need pointing out,-the love of rocks, and true understanding of their colors and characters, opposed as it is in every conceivable way to Dante's hatred and misunderstanding of them.

--

I have already traced, in various places, most of the causes

of this great difference: namely, first, the ruggedness of northern temper (compare § 8. of the chapter on the Nature of Gothic in the Stones of Venice); then the really greater beauty of the northern rocks, as noted when we were speaking of the Apennine limestone; then the need of finding beauty among them, if it were to be found anywhere,-no well-arranged colors being any more to be seen in dress, but only in rock lichens; and, finally, the love of irregularity, liberty, and power, springing up in glorious opposition to laws of prosody, fashion, and the five orders.

The other passage I have to quote is still more interesting; because it has no form in it at all except in one word (chalice), but wholly composes its imagery either of color, or of that delicate half-believed life which we have seen to be so important an element in modern landscape.

"The summer dawn's reflected hue

To purple changed Loch Katrine blue;
Mildly and soft the western breeze
Just kissed the lake; just stirred the trees;
And the pleased lake, like maiden coy,
Trembled, but dimpled not, for joy;
The mountain-shadows on her breast
Were neither broken nor at rest;
In bright uncertainty they lie,
Like future joys to Fancy's eye.

The water-lily to the light

Her chalice reared of silver bright:

The doe awoke, and to the lawn,
Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn;

The grey mist left the mountain side;
The torrent showed its glistening pride;
Invisible in fleckëd sky,

The lark sent down her revelry;

The blackbird and the speckled thrush

Good-morrow gave from brake and bush;