rchange of ideas amongst those
who are working, side by side, making fresh discoveries day by day as to
what materials will do under the changes that occur in conditions that
are ever changing.

However, one must not linger further over these little matters, and it
now becomes my task to return to the great leading principles and try to
deal with them, and the first cardinal principle of stained-glass work
surely is that of COLOUR.

CHAPTER XVI

OF COLOUR

But how hopeless to deal with it by way of words in a book where actual
colour cannot be shown!

Nevertheless, let us try.

* * * * *

... One thinks of morning and evening; ... of clouds passing over the
sun; of the dappled glow and glitter, and of faint flushes cast from the
windows on the cathedral pavement; of pearly white, like the lining of a
shell; of purple bloom and azure haze, and grass-green and golden spots,
like the budding of the spring; of all the gaiety, the sparkle, and the
charm.

And then, as if the evening were drawing on, comes over the memory the
picture of those graver harmonies, in the full glow of red and blue,
which go with the deep notes of the great organ, playing requiem or
evening hymn.

Of what use is it to speak of these things? The words fall upon the ear,
but the eye is not filled.

All stained-glass gathers itself up into this one subject; the glory of
the heavens is in it and the fulness of the earth, and we know that the
showing forth of it cannot be in words.

Is it any use, for instance, to speak of these primroses along the
railway bank, and those silver buds of the alder in the hollow of the
copse?

One thinks of a hint here and a hint there; the very sentences come in
fragments. Yet one thing we may say securely: that the practice of
stained-glass is a very good way to _learn_ colour, or as much of it as
can come by learning.

For, consider:--

A painter has his colour-box and palette;

And if he has a good master he may learn by degrees how to mix his
colour into harmonies;

Doing a little first, cautiously;

Trying the problem in one or two simple tints; learning the combinations
of these in their various degrees of lighter or darker:

Exhausting, as much as he can, the possibilities of one or two pigments,
and then adding another and another;

But always with a very limited number of actual separate ones to draw
upon;

All the infinity of the whole world o