of pigments, though very fast as soluble colours.

Pink, though one of the most beautiful colours in combination, is
not easy to use as a flat tint even over moderate spaces; the more
orangy shades of it are the most useful, a cold pink being a colour
much to be avoided.

As to purple, no one in his senses would think of using it bright in
masses. In combination it may be used somewhat bright, if it be
warm and tend towards red; but the best and most characteristic
shade of purple is nowise bright, but tends towards russet.
Egyptian porphyry, especially when contrasted with orange, as in the
pavement of St. Mark's at Venice, will represent the colour for you.
At the British Museum, and one or two other famous libraries, are
still left specimens of this tint, as Byzantine art in its palmy
days understood it. These are books written with gold and silver on
vellum stained purple, probably with the now lost murex or fish-dye
of the ancients, the tint of which dye-stuff Pliny describes
minutely and accurately in his 'Natural History.' I need scarcely
say that no ordinary flat tint could reproduce this most splendid of
colours.

Though green (at all events in England) is the colour widest used by
Nature, yet there is not so much bright green used by her as many
people seem to think; the most of it being used for a week or two in
spring, when the leafage is small, and blended with the greys and
other negative colours of the twigs; when 'leaves grow large and
long,' as the ballad has it, they also grow grey. I believe it has
been noted by Mr. Ruskin, and it certainly seems true, that the
pleasure we take in the young spring foliage comes largely from its