The Saline County journal. [volume] (Salina, Kan.) 1871-1893, 1877-07-19
Colors Used hY the Ancients.

Colors Used by the Ancients.
The following interesting statements
concerning the colors used by the an
clients, are taken from the celebrated lec-
ture by Wendell Phillips, on "The Lost
Arts:
"Color is, we say, an ornament. We
dye our dresses and ornament our furni-
ture. II is an ornament to crafty the
eye, but the Egyptians impressed it into
new service; for them il was method
OF recording history.
"Some parts of their history were
written; but when they wanted to
elaborate history, they painted IT. Their
colors are immortal, else we could not
know of it. We find upon the stucco OF
their walls their kings holding court,
their armies marching out, their crafts
men in the shipyard with the ships float
ing in the dock; in fact, we trace oil
their rites and customs painted in indy
ing coiors.
"The French, who went to Egypt with
Napolean, said that all the colors were
perfect, except the greenish-white, which
is the hardest for US. They had no diff
Guilty with the Tyrian purple. The bur
led city of Pompeii was a city of stucco;
all the houses arc of stucco outside and
1T is stained with Tyrian purple the
royal color Of antiquity.
"But you can never rely on the name
of color after thousand years, so the
Tyrian purple is almost red; about the
color of these curtains. This is city OF
oil red. 1t had been buried ], ZOO years,
and if you take shovel now and clear
away tho ashes, up this color flames up
on you,a great deal richer than anything
we can produce.
"You can 90 down into the narrow
vault which Nero built him as retreat
from the great heat, and you will find
the walls painted all over with fanciful
designs in arabesque, which have been
buried beneath the earth 800 years I;
but when the peasants light it up with
their torches, the colors fash out before
YOU as fresh as they were in the days Of
st. Paul.
"a painter spends twelve years in
Venice, studying Titian's method ofmix-
ing his coiors, and he thinks he has got
it. Yet come down from Titan, whose
colors are wonderfully and perfectly
fresh, to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and, al
though his colors are not yet hundred
years old, they are fading; the color on
his lips is dying out, and the cheeks are
losing their tints. lie did not know how
10 mix well.
Gall this mastery of color is, as yet,
unequalei. Ifyou should 60 with that
most delightful of all lecturers, Prof.
Tyndall, no would show you in the
spectrum the vanishing rays of violet,
and prove to you that beyond their limit
there are rays more delicate and to you
invisible, but which he, by chemical pa
per, will make visible and he will tell
you that probably, though you see three
or four inches more than 800 years ago
your predecessors did, yet 800 years
hereafter our successors will surpass our
limit.
"The French have theory that there
is n certain delicate shade of blue that
Europeans cannot see. In one of his
lectures TO his students, Ruskin opened
his Catholic mass book and said: 'Gen-
tlemen, We are the best chemists in the
world. No EngliShman could ever
doubt that. But we cannot make such
O scarlet as that, and even if we could, it
would not last tor twenty years Yet
this is 500 years ago!
Tho Frcnchman says: Il nm the best
dyer in Europe nobody can equal me
and nobody can surpass Lyons Yetin
Cashmere, where girls make shawls
worth $4,000, they will show. him 800
distinct colors which he not only cannot
make, but cannot even distinguish.
"Whcn was in Rome, il q lady wish
ed 10 wear balfdozen colors at a mas
querade and have them all in harmony,
sbo would go to the Jews, tor the Orr
entail eye is better that even those OF
France or taly,which we think so high
ly Of"