er of proportion it is true that the most
unstable part of our scenery is the most stable part of theirs. Indeed
we might almost be pardoned the boast that Britain alone really
possesses the noble thing called weather; most other countries having to
be content with climate. It must be confessed, however, that they often
are content with it. And the beauty of New York, which is considerable,
is very largely due to the clarity that brings out the colours of varied
buildings against the equal colour of the sky. Strangely enough I found
myself repeating about this vista of the West two vivid lines in which
Mr. W. B. Yeats has called up a vision of the East:--

And coloured like the eastern birds
At evening in their rainless skies.

To invoke a somewhat less poetic parallel, even the untravelled
Englishman has probably seen American posters and trade advertisements
of a patchy and gaudy kind, in which a white house or a yellow motor-car
are cut out as in cardboard against a sky like blue marble. I used to
think it was only New Art, but I found that it is really New York.

It is not for nothing that the very nature of local character has gained
the nickname of local colour. Colour runs through all our experience;
and we all know that our childhood found talismanic gems in the very
paints in the paint-box, or even in their very names. And just as the
very name of 'crimson lake' really suggested to me some sanguine and
mysterious mere, dark yet red as blood, so the very name of 'burnt
sienna' became afterwards tangled up in my mind with the notion of
something traditional and tragic; as if some such golden Italian city
had really been darkened by many conflagrations in the wars of mediaeval
democracy. Now if one had the caprice of conceiving some city exactly
contrary to one thus seared and seasoned by fire, its colour might be
called up to a childish fancy by the mere name of 'raw umber'; and such
a city is New York. I used to be puzzled by the name of 'raw umber,'
being unable to imagine the effect of fried umber or stewed umber. But
the colours of New York are exactly in that key; and might be adumbrated
by phrases like raw pink or raw yellow. It is really in a sense like
something uncooked; or something which the satiric would call
half-baked. And yet the effect is not only beautiful, it is even
delicate. I had no name for this nuance; until I saw that somebody had
written of 'the pastel-tinted towers of New