avage alike admire the gay tints of
flowers, birds, and insects; while to many of us their contemplation
brings a solace and enjoyment which is both intellectually and morally
beneficial. It can then hardly excite surprise that this relation was
long thought to afford a sufficient explanation of the phenomena of
colour in nature; and although the fact that--

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air,

might seem to throw some doubt on the sufficiency of the explanation,
the answer was easy,--that in the progress of discovery man would,
sooner or later, find out and enjoy every beauty that the hidden
recesses of the earth have in store for him."

Professor Colvin speaks with special admiration of Greek scenery:--

"In other climates, it is only in particular states of the weather that
the remote ever seems so close, and then with an effect which is sharp
and hard as well as clear; here the clearness is soft; nothing cuts or
glitters, seen through that magic distance; the air has not only a new
transparency so that you can see farther into it than elsewhere, but a
new quality, like some crystal of an unknown water, so that to see into
it is greater glory." Speaking of the ranges and promontories of sterile
limestone, the same writer observes that their colours are as austere
and delicate as the forms. "If here the scar of some old quarry throws a
stain, or there the clinging of some thin leafage spreads a bloom, the
stain is of precious gold, and the bloom of silver. Between the blue of
the sky and the tenfold blue of the sea these bare ranges seem, beneath
that daylight, to present a whole system of noble colour flung abroad
over perfect forms. And wherever, in the general sterility, you find a
little moderate verdure--a little moist grass, a cluster of
cypresses--or whenever your eye lights upon the one wood of the
district, the long olive grove of the Cephissus, you are struck with a
sudden sense of richness, and feel as if the splendours of the tropics
would be nothing to this."

Most travellers have been fascinated by the beauty of night in the
tropics. Our evenings no doubt are often delicious also, though the mild
climate we enjoy is partly due to the sky being so often overcast. In
parts of the tropics, however, the air is calm and cloudless throughout
nearly the whole of the year. There is no dew, and the inhabitants sleep
on the house-tops, in full view