had not as yet been
differentiated, either in common parlance or in poetry,[283] though as
articles of commerce the purple tints had been early distinguished.

What names have we now, in this present advanced day, for defining
tastes or smells? We say that something smells like a violet, or a
rose, or a sea breeze, or a frosted cabbage. We say a smell is nice or
nasty, that a taste is delicious or nauseous; but beyond calling it
sweet or sour, we have no descriptive words for either smells or
tastes, whereas the nations who traded in the materials for dyes
exchanged their nomenclatures, which we can recognize from the
descriptive remarks of different authors.

Colour, as an art, was born in those lands which cluster round the
eastern shores of the Mediterranean--the northern coasts of Syria and
Arabia, and the isles of Greece. All art grew in that area, and all
its adjuncts and materials there came to perfection, though often
imported from more southern and eastern sources.[284]

E. Curtius says that the science of colour came into Europe with the
Phoenicians and accompanied the worship of Astarte. This, of course,
applies to artistic textiles, as the Greeks had already acquired the
art of dyeing for plain weaving. Numa, in his regulations for
necessary weaving, refers also to colour. The Italians therefore
must at that time have made some advance in the art, especially the
Etruscans.[285]

The infinity of variation in colour is difficult to imagine. The
chemists of the Gobelins have fixed and catalogued 4480 tones.
Besides, we must not forget that it is now all but ascertained that
the same colour is probably appreciated differently by nearly every
eye.[286]

How the eye accepts colours and conveys them to the mind is still a
question in dispute, though the theories of Tyndall, Helmholz, Hering,
Charpentier, and others, aided by experiments, are drawing ascertained
facts into a circle, which will ere long be complete, and the
mysteries of colour may be ascertained.

Probably the effects of colour on educated minds are as various as the
tints and shades of tones of the many substances which receive
them,--reflected from all surrounding objects, blazing in light, or
softened by shadow,--fresh and glowing, or permanently faded--shining
with modern varnish, or sobered by the dust of ages.

It is the art of the colourist, whether he paints pictures, or dyes
textiles, or embroiders them, to reduce the tints of the p