ribbon, a
white muslin jacket, you know, bound at the waist with a ribbon of the
first, and a dark skirt, with a shawl round her feet which Kuhn had
arranged. As she stopped, the donkey fell to cropping greens in the
hedge; the trees there chequered her white dress and face with shadow.
Her eyes, hair, and forehead were in shadow too--but the light was all
upon her right cheek: upon her shoulder down to her arm, which was of a
warmer white, and on the bunch of flowers which she held, blue, yellow,
and red poppies, and so forth.

"J. J. says, 'I think the birds began to sing louder when she came.' We
have both agreed that she is the handsomest woman in England. It's
not her form merely, which is certainly as yet too thin and a little
angular--it is her colour. I do not care for woman or picture without
colour. O ye carnations! O ye lilia mista rosis! O such black hair and
solemn eyebrows! It seems to me the roses and carnations have bloomed
again since we saw them last in London, when they were drooping from the
exposure to night air, candle-light, and heated ballrooms.

"Here I was in the midst of a regiment of donkeys, bearing a crowd of
relations; J. J. standing modestly in the background--beggars completing
the group, and Kuhn ruling over them with voice and gesture, oaths
and whip. Throw in the Rhine in the distance flashing by the Seven
Mountains--but mind and make Ethel the principal figure: if you make her
like, she certainly will be--and other lights will be only minor fires.
You may paint her form, but you can't paint her colour; that is what
beats us in nature. A line must come right; you can force that into its
place, but you can't compel the circumambient air. There is no yellow I
know of will make sunshine, and no blue that is a bit like sky. And so
with pictures: I think you only get signs of colour, and formulas to
stand for it. That brick-dust which we agree to receive as representing
a blush, look at it--can you say it is in the least like the blush which
flickers and varies as it sweeps over the down of the cheek--as you see
sunshine playing over a meadow? Look into it and see what a variety of
delicate blooms there are! a multitude of flowerets twining into one
tint! We may break our colour-pots and strive after the line alone: that
is palpable and we can grasp it--the other is impossible and beyond
us." Which sentiment I here set down, not on account of its worth (and
I think it is contradicted--as