mechanical and inventive genius as well, may so arrange them that they
can be played by rule; that colour may have its Mozart or
Beethoven--its classic melodies, its familiar tunes. The musician, as I
have said--has gathered his tones from every audible thing in
nature--and fitted and assorted and built them into a science; and why
should not some painter who is also a scientist take the many variations
of colour which lie open to his sight, and range and fit and combine,
and write the formula, so that a child may read it?

We already know enough to be very sure that the art is founded upon
laws, although they are not thoroughly understood. Principles of masses,
spaces, and gradations underlie all accidental harmonies of
colour;--just as in music, the simple, strong, under-chords of the bass
must be the ground for all the changes and trippings of the upper
melodies.

It is easy, if one studies the subject, to see how the very likeness of
these two esthetic forces illustrate the laws of each,--in the
principles of relation, gradation, and scale.

Until very recently the relation of colour to the beauty of a house
interior was quite unrecognised. If it existed in any degree of
perfection it was an accident, a result of the softening and beautifying
effect of time, or of harmonious human living. Where it existed, it was
felt as a mysterious charm belonging to the home; something which
pervaded it, but had no separate being; an attractive ghost which
attached itself to certain houses, followed certain people, came by
chance, and was a mystery which no one understood, but every one
acknowledged. Now we know that this something which distinguished
particular rooms, and made beautiful particular houses, was a definite