the jewels of a lady walking along the street. It was a gay scene, beneath the sunny blue skies dashed with warm clouds. And the charm of the country scene would be even more intensified by the brilliancy of the clear air and bright sun, which emphasizes the lichen on the cottage-roof and walls, the yellow in the old flagstones, the gleaming of the ricks, the rich shadows flung by the soft green foliage of the tall trees.
Then—the next time!
Heavy rains swept the streets or drenched the meadows, clouds hung dark and threatening, pavements gleamed coldly, the muddy lanes were glittering, heavy foliage dripping, thick soft mists, arising, all was wet, grey, and cold. There were dull shadows where the people walked the streets, the tops of the houses were shrouded in murky fog, and in the country lanes the cows moved between the heavy hedges wrapped in a moist cold air.
Do you realize that there must always be one general hue that envelops, and blends, and harmonizes?
Have not you sometimes said of a painting, "I don't know what is the matter with that picture . . . but I don't like it"? You have a very definite reason, but you cannot put it into words. You don't like it, and if you lived to be a hundred you feel you would never like it more or hate it less. In other words, you feel there is something that jars upon you. If we tried to analyse your feelings about that picture, we should probably discover that a crash of discords upon the piano bore a strong resemblance to the jarring colours of the picture.
The man who painted the picture did not try too discover the general colour that ran through his picture, and blend it harmoniously together; but, like a simultaneous crash of all the notes on the piano, he banged every tint thick and fast upon his canvas.
On certain islands in the South Seas the native mothers fill hollowed-out trunks of trees with water and in this water boldly place their infants, and the babies swim.
