party would pass a glowing yellow flower by, but would rescue a tiny purple bloom beside it from what seemed to others of us obscurity. And of those who are most alive to the purple end of the spectrum are the Japanese. It is not, as one hears so often stated, that they do not see colour or care for it, but that, instead, being sensitively organized in that respect, they prefer the delicate to the more striking effect; also, in a way, they are so entirely en rapport with Nature that what she gives them at different times of the year is what they like best. For instance, in winter, the pallid snowflake flowers of the Plum are the loved herald of the oncoming spring-time, when the petals and the snowflakes too will have fallen and finished. Spring, in other lands than Japan, gives us misty purples and pale mauves in her flowers, and if to this poetic people the fragile beauty of the Iris, the delicate, drooping grace of the Wistaria, appeal more than the flaming glory of their Azaleas, it is only, perhaps, because the wistfulness of the charm of these flowers suits their character and climate, and is more in sympathy with their ideas. Certainly, in the autumn, their worship of colour equals that of any nation, if it does not surpass it; but the season is then with them in this. The sparkle of frost is in the wind, the blood runs faster, the sun shines; and Nature, in air, landscape, and man, bounds and glows in harmony. India with
