al dissonances are of great beauty in color
translation. All that can safely be said in regard to the musical
parallel in its present stage of development is that it simplifies and
systematizes color knowledge and experiment and to a beginner it is
highly educational.

If we are to have color symphonies, the best are not likely to be
those based on a literal translation of some musical masterpiece into
color according to this or any theory, but those created by persons
who are emotionally reactive to this medium, able to imagine in color,
and to treat it imaginatively. The most beautiful mobile color effects
yet witnessed by the author were produced on a field only five inches
square, by an eminent painter quite ignorant of music; while some of
the most unimpressive have been the result of a rigid adherence to the
musical parallel by persons intent on cutting, with this sword, this
Gordian knot.

Into the subject of means and methods it is not proposed to enter, nor
to attempt to answer such questions as to whether the light shall be
direct or projected; whether the spectator, wrapped in darkness, shall
watch the music unfold at the end of some mysterious vista, or
whether his whole organism shall be played upon by powerful waves
of multi-coloured light. These coupled alternatives are not mutually
exclusive, any more than the idea of an orchestra is exclusive of that
of a single human voice.

In imagining an art of mobile color unconditioned by considerations
of mechanical difficulty or of expense, ideas multiply in truly
bewildering profusion. Sunsets, solar coronas, star spectra, auroras
such as were never seen on sea or land; rainbows, bubbles, rippling
water; flaming volcanoes, lava streams of living light--these and a
hundred other enthralling and perfectly realizable effects suggest
themselves. What Israfil of the future will pour on mortals this new
"music of the spheres"?

LOUIS SULLIVAN

PROPHET OF DEMOCRACY

Due tribute has been paid to Mr. Louis Sullivan as an architect in
the first essay of this volume. That aspect of his genius has been
critically dealt with by many, but as an author he is scarcely
known. Yet there are Sibylline leaves of his, still let us hope in
circulation, which have wielded a potent influence on the minds of a
generation of men now passing to maturity. It is in the hope that his
message may not be lost to the youth of today and of tomorrow that the
present author now u