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e! And may there not here be a symbol of such a union? The art of color is yet in its infancy, and although Tyrian purple was magnificent and famous, and the highly prized Turkey red unfading, yet modern chemical discovery has opened a wide variety of hues unknown to the ancients. Colors obtained from vegetable substances have been the most numerous, those from the animal kingdom the most brilliant, and from the mineral the greatest variety from the same substance. A buff, a blue, and a black, and again a red, a blue, a purple, and a violet, are produced from the same metal. The recent discovery of aniline colors, to be extracted from coal refuse, has given art new, beautiful, and durable shades of red, blue, purple, and violet. We know but by description what the lauded Tyrian purple was, for monopoly caused the art to be lost; but for softness, richness, and beauty of purple we have none to approach that extracted from this refuse. Nature means nothing to be lost, and waste arises from ignorance. She is a royal mistress when royally represented. To the mineral kingdom we are indebted for most of the mordants which fix the hues derived from other sources. That in union is strength is taught by the most common art. Much is yet to be learned in regard to color. Men have understood its correspondence sufficiently to associate red and cruelty as its lowest expression, so that the men of the bloody French Revolution received an undying name from the red cap of the Carmagnole costume--and yellow with shame, for a ruff of this color on the neck of a woman hanged drove this fashion out of England--and white with purity, as the ermine of the judge shows; although, thousands of years ago, the men of Tartary and Thibet prized the wool of the Crimean sheep stained of a peculiar gray by its feeding upon the _centarina myriocephala_, and although modern gardeners deepen the hues of plants by feeding them judiciously, yet few attach the requisite importance to color as history. Writers for the most part pass silently by this great aid to a correct understanding of past events. Color in costume is no less essential to a true description or representation than form; in some instances it is more so. The _color_ of the silken sails of Cleopatra's vessel, as she sailed down the Cydnus, proclaimed her royalty as no other could have done. A fairy could not be depicted without her green robe, or young Aurora unless tinted with
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