That which it is permitted me to relate to you moves on swiftly before the thoughts, like the compression in the last act of a drama. The next scene which starts from the variousness of heavenly delight I find to be the Symphony of Color. There was a time in the history of art, below, when this, and similar phrases, had acquired almost a slang significance, owing to the affectation of their use by the shallow. I was, therefore, the more surprised at meeting a fact so lofty behind the guise of the familiar words; and noted it as but one of many instances in which the earthly had deteriorated from the ideals of the celestial life. It seemed that the development of color had reached a point never conceived of below, and that the treatment of it constituted an art by itself. By this I do not mean its treatment under the form of painting, decoration, dress, or any embodiment whatever. What we were called to witness was an exhibition of color, pure and simple. This occasion, of which I especially speak, was controlled by great colorists, some of earthly, some of heavenly renown. Not all of them were artists in the accepted sense of designers; among them were one or two select creatures in whom the passion of color had been remarkable, but, so far as the lower world was concerned, for the great part inactive, for want of any scientific means of expression. We have all known the _color natures_, and, if we have had a fine sympathy, have compassionated them as much as any upon earth, whether they were found among the disappointed disciples of Art itself, or hidden away in plain homes, where the paucity of existence held all the delicacy and the dream of life close prisoners.