s, or dangerous, common colors are reserved. Consider
for a little while what sort of a world it would be if all flowers were
grey, all leaves black, and the sky _brown_. Imagine that, as completely
as may be, and consider whether you would think the world any whit more
sacred for being thus transfigured into the hues of the shadows in
Raphael's Transfiguration. Then observe how constantly innocent things
are bright in color; look at a dove's neck, and compare it with the grey
back of a viper; I have often heard talk of brilliantly colored serpents;
and I suppose there are such,--as there are gay poisons, like the
foxglove and kalmia--types of deceit; but all the venomous serpents I
have really _seen_ are grey, brick-red, or brown, variously mottled; and
the most awful serpent I have seen, the Egyptian asp, is precisely of the
color of gravel, or only a little greyer. So, again, the crocodile and
alligator are grey, but the innocent lizard green and beautiful. I do not
mean that the rule is invariable, otherwise it would be more convincing
than the lessons of the natural universe are intended ever to be; there
are beautiful colors on the leopard and tiger, and in the berries of the
night-shade; and there is nothing very notable in brilliancy of color
either in sheep or cattle (though, by the way, the velvet of a brown
bull's hide in the sun, or the tawny white of the Italian oxen, is, to my
mind, lovelier than any leopard's or tiger's skin); but take a wider view
of nature, and compare generally rainbows, sunrises, roses, violets,
butterflies, birds, gold-fish, rubies, opals, and corals, with
alligators, hippopotami, lions, wolves, bears, swine, sharks, slugs,
bones, fungi,[21] frogs, and corrupting, stinging, destroying things in
general, and you will feel then how the question stands between the
colorists and chiaroscurists,--which of them have nature and life on
their side, and which have sin and death.

Sec. 24. Finally: the ascertainment of the sanctity of color is not left to
human sagacity. It is distinctly stated in Scripture. I have before
alluded to the sacred chord of color (blue, purple, and scarlet, with
white and gold) as appointed in the Tabernacle; this chord is the fixed
base of all coloring with the workmen of every great age; the purple and
scarlet will be found constantly employed by noble painters, in various
unison, to the exclusion in general of pure crimson;--it is the harmony
described by Herodot