The stationer's
envelopes may be of very various tints, yet not so various as those of
the leaves of a single tree. If you want a different shade or tint of a
particular color, you have only to look farther within or without the
tree or the wood. These leaves are not many dipped in one dye, as at the
dye-house, but they are dyed in light of infinitely various degrees of
strength, and left to set and dry there.
Shall the names of so many of our colors continue to be derived from
those of obscure foreign localities, as Naples yellow, Prussian blue,
raw Sienna, burnt Umber, Gamboge?--(surely the Tyrian purple must have
faded by this time)--or from comparatively trivial articles of
commerce,--chocolate, lemon, coffee, cinnamon, claret?--(shall we
compare our Hickory to a lemon, or a lemon to a Hickory?)--or from ores
and oxides which few ever see? Shall we so often, when describing to our
neighbors the color of something we have seen, refer them, not to some
natural object in our neighborhood, but perchance to a bit of earth
fetched from the other side of the planet, which possibly they may find
at the apothecary's, but which probably neither they nor we ever saw?
Have we not an _earth_ under our feet,--ay, and a sky over our heads? Or
is the last _all_ ultramarine? What do we know of sapphire, amethyst,
emerald, ruby, amber, and the like,--most of us who take these names in
vain? Leave these precious words to cabinet-keepers, virtuosos, and
maids-of-honor,--to the Nabobs, Begums, and Chobdars of Hindostan, or
wherever else.
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