Nor was it only in seeing this color in vividness when it occurred in full light, that Turner differed from preceding painters. His most distinctive innovation as a colorist was his discovery of the scarlet _shadow_. "True, there is a sunshine whose light is golden, and its shadow gray; but there is another sunshine, and that the purest, whose light is white, and its shadow scarlet." This was the essentially offensive, inconceivable thing, which he could not be believed in. There was some ground for the incredulity, because no color is vivid enough to express the pitch of light of pure white sunshine, so that the color given without the true intensity of light _looks_ false. Nevertheless, Turner could not but report of the color truly. "I must indeed be lower in the key, but that is no reason why I should be false in the note. Here is sunshine which glows even when subdued; it has not cool shade, but fiery shade."[2] This is the glory of sunshine. § 7. Now, this scarlet color,--or pure red, intensified by expression of light,--is, of all the three primitive colors, that which is most distinctive. Yellow is of the nature of simple light; blue, connected with simple shade; but red is an entirely abstract color. It is red to which the color-blind are blind, as if to show us that it was not necessary merely for the service or comfort of man, but that there was a special gift or teaching in this color. Observe, farther, that it is this color which the sunbeams take in passing through the _earth's atmosphere_. The rose of dawn and sunset is the hue of the rays passing close over the earth. It is also concentrated in the blood of man. [Illustration: 80. Rocks at Rest.] § 8. Unforeseen requirements have compelled me to disperse through various works, undertaken between the first and last portions of this essay, the examination of many points respecting color, which I had intended to reserve for this place. I can now only refer the reader to these several passages,[3] and sum their import: which is briefly, that color generally, but chiefly the scarlet, used with the hyssop, in the Levitical law, is the great sanctifying element of visible beauty inseparably connected with purity and life. [Illustration: 81. Rocks in Unrest.] I must not enter here into the solemn and far-reaching fields of thought which it would be necessary to traverse, in order to detect the mystical connection between life and love, set forth in that Hebrew system of sacrificial religion to which we may trace most of the received ideas respecting sanctity, consecration, and purification. This only I must hint to the reader--for his own following out--that if he earnestly examines the original sources from which our heedless popular language respecting the washing away of sins has been borrowed, he will find that the fountain in which sins are indeed to be washed away, is that of love, not of agony.