ne all the laws of refraction
to which our systems of physics have subjected them. Hence not a single
shade of color is employed in vain, through the universe; those
celestial decorations being made for the level of the earth, their
magnificent point of view taken from the habitation of man.

"These admirable concerts of lights and forms, manifest only in the
lower region of the clouds the least illuminated by the sun, are
produced by laws with which I am totally unacquainted. But the whole are
reducible to five colors: yellow, a generation from white; red, a deeper
shade of yellow; blue, a strong tint of red; and black, the extreme tint
of blue. This progression cannot be doubted, on observing in the morning
the expansion of the light in the heavens. You there see those five
colors, with their intermediate shades, generating each other nearly in
this order: white, sulphur yellow, lemon yellow, yolk of egg yellow,
orange, aurora color, poppy red, full red, carmine red, purple, violet,
azure, indigo, and black. Each color seems to be only a strong tint of
that which precedes it, and a faint tint of that which follows; thus the
whole together appear to be only modulations of a progression, of which
white is the first term, and black the last.

"Indeed trade cannot be carried on to any advantage, with the Negroes,
Tartars, Americans, and East-Indians, but through the medium of red
cloths. The testimonies of travellers are unanimous respecting the
preference universally given to this color. I have indicated the
universality of this taste, merely to demonstrate the falsehood of the
philosophic axiom, that tastes are arbitrary, or that there are in
Nature no laws for beauty, and that our tastes are the effects of
prejudice. The direct contrary of this is the truth; prejudice corrupts
our natural tastes, otherwise the same over the whole earth.

"With red Nature heightens the brilliant parts of the most beautiful
flowers. She has given a complete clothing of it to the rose, the queen
of the garden: and bestowed this tint on the blood, the principle of
life in animals: she invests most of the feathered race, in India, with
a plumage of this color, especially in the season of love; and there are
few birds without some shades, at least, of this rich hue. Some preserve
entirely the gray or brown ground of their plumage, but glazed over with
red, as if they had been rolled in carmine; others are besprinkled with
red, as if you ha