of Making Enemies”—he exchanged with the artist remarks like these: “Which part of the picture, then, really represents the bridge? Do you mean to say that this is the proper representation of a bridge?” (The question referred to “Battersea Bridge by Moonlight.”) “I had no intention of giving an exact copy of the bridge.” “Do these daubs of colour on it represent human beings?” “They represent what you please.” “Is that thing under there a boat?” “It is a consolation to me that you recognise it. My whole object was only to produce a definite harmony of colours.” He could hear this harmony of colours: Ruskin and Judge Huddleston could not. It was utterly futile to try to make them feel it. His peculiarity of giving his pictures fine and pretentious names, such as “Black and Gold,” “Blue and Silver,” “Ivory and Gold,” “Purple and Gold” is also generally misunderstood. People read “Silver and Blue,” and saw indistinctly intricate brush-strokes of blue with elevations in dead white, representing, by way of indication, the high seas by night and in a mist. People hurried to the picture labelled “Ivory and Gold,” expecting to gaze at something like an ancient chryselephantine marvel, or a Florentine masterpiece of splendour belonging to the days of the Medici, and what did they find? The lightly executed sketch of a woman in a yellow and white harmony, in which one looked in vain for the costly materials promised by the title. Not Philistines alone have shaken their heads over this, and evil-disposed critics have talked of hoaxing, foppery, and American bluff. They have wronged the artist bitterly. He was absolutely honest; his optical hyper-sensitiveness felt the colour with so heightened an appreciation of tone that he really saw gold, silver, and purple, where a less susceptible sense could only see dull yellow, deadened white, undecided reddish-brown. In all probability, it was long before he realised that others failed to observe, in the appearance of the actual things and his pictures of them, the rare metals and precious stones, the pearls and ivory, which gleamed from them to him. The common phrase, which is a precipitate of the universal thought and feeling, speaks of sun-gold and moon-silver. Sun and moon consequently make such a strong optical impression on even the average man that he thinks of gold and silver with the accompanying higher notes of ideas of splendour and magnificence. In Whistler’s consciousness, however, these ideas began to be felt with gentle excitations, as whitish foam on dark waves in the night, or a woman’s pale complexion in cream-coloured raiment yielded them. These delicate charms affected his sensitiveness just as the force of the sun or moon affects others. In maniacal excitation, of which the acutest form is madness, the brain of the sick person becomes so supersensitive that it reacts on the ordinary impressions of the senses just as on intolerably violent irritations.