is on. Did not the strong red, green, and blue
of Napoleon's time follow the delicate sky-blues, rose and
sunset-yellows of the Louis?

Colour pulses on every side, strong, clean, clear rainbow colour, as if
our magicians of brush and dye-pot held a prism to the sun-beam; violet,
orange and green, magentas and strong blue against backgrounds of black
and cold grey.

We had come to think of colour as vice and had grown so conservative in
its use, that it had all but disappeared from our persons, our homes,
our gardens, our music and our literature. More than this, from our
point of view! The reaction was bound to come by reason of eternal
precedent.

Half-tones, antique effects, and general monotony,--the material
expression of complacent minds, has been cast aside, and the blase man
of ten years ago is as keen as any child with his first linen picture
book,--and for the same reason.

Colour, as we see it to-day, came out of the East via Persia. Bakst in
Russia translated it into terms of art, and made the Ballet Russe an
amazing, enthralling vision! Then Poiret, wizard among French
couturieres, assisted by Bakst, adapted this Oriental colour and line to
woman's uses in private life. This supplemented the good work of _le
Gazette du Bon Ton_ of Paris, that effete fashion sheet, devoted to the
decoration of woman, whose staff included many of the most gifted French
artists, masters of brush and pen. Always irregular, no issue of the
_Bon Ton_ has appeared of late. It is held up by the war. The men who
made it so fascinating a guide to woman "who would be decorative," are
at the front, painting scenery for the battlefield--literally that:
making mock trees and rocks, grass and hedges and earth, to mislead the
fire of the enemy, and doubtless the kindred Munich art has been
diverted into similar channels.

This Oriental colour has made its way across Europe like some gorgeous
bird of the tropics, and since the war has checked the output of
Europe's factories, another channel has supplied the same wonderful
colours in silks and gauze. They come to us by way of the Pacific, from
China and from Japan. There is no escaping the colour spell. Writers
from the front tell us that it is as if the gods made sport with fate's
anvil, for even the blackened dome of the war zone is lurid by night,
with sparks of purple, red, green, yellow and blue; the flare of the
world-destroying projectiles.

PLATE IX

A Velasquez