people
may feed the ear alone with the one, or satisfy the eye alone with the
other; the nerves which carry the sensation to the brain, flutter with
the news, and knock at the house of mind for explanation. We do not
anticipate being hurried into any extravaganza about the rural felicity
of green trees, clinking cowbells, cane chairs, and cigars, when we
recall to the trainer of surburban vines the harmony, the analogy, the
relationship, which he must have observed between sounds and colors in
nature's album of melodies.

When, at evening, the zenith blue melts away toward the horizon in
dreamy violet, and the retreating sun leaves limber shafts of orange
light, like Parthian arrows, among the green branches of the elms, what
sounds can charm the ear like the soft chirrup of the cricket, the
homely drone of the hive-seeking bee, and the cool rustle of the breeze
through the tops of the spring-sodden water grasses? How fondly the mind
blends the evening colors and the incipient voices of the night! 'Oh,'
says the metaphysician, 'this is association: just so a strain of music
reminds you of a fine passage in a book you have read, or a beautiful
tone in a picture you have seen; just so the Ranz des Vaches bears the
exile to the timber house, with shady leaves, corbelled and
strut-supported, whose very weakness appeals to the avalanche that
shakes an icicly beard in monition from the impeding crags.'

Well, let association play her part in some cases; when a habit has
necessitated the recurrence of two distinct ideas together, they will
certainly be associated at times when the habit is gone; but suppose the
analogy is felt when the ideas have never before been in juxtaposition,
or when there has even been no sensation at all to generate one of the
notions. How, for instance, did the sightless imaginer ever conceive
that red must be like the sound of the trumpet? Simply because the
analogy between color and music is deeper than the idea of either, more
absolute than association could make it; because certain tints are
calculated to produce exactly similar impressions on the eye that
certain sounds do upon the ear; or, to use a mathematical turn of
expression, because some color [Greek: x] is to the eye as some sound
[Greek: x] is to the ear.

That this mathematical turn of expression is no vagary, but perfectly
germane to the subject, and accurate in application, we propose to prove
to those who love coincidences and an