Such are the advantages, as an instrument of amusement, which the Kaleidoscope possesses, even in its present imperfect state. To what degree of perfection it may yet arrive, it is not easy to anticipate; but we may venture to predict, because we see the steps by which the prediction is to be fulfilled, that combinations of forms and colours may be made to succeed each other in such a manner as to excite sentiments and ideas with as much vivacity as those which are excited by musical composition. If it be true that there are harmonic colours which inspire more pleasure by their combination than others; that dull and gloomy masses, moving slowly before the eye, excite feelings of sadness and distress; and that the aërial tracery of light and evanescent forms, enriched with lively colours, are capable of inspiring us with cheerfulness and gaiety; then it is unquestionable, that, by a skilful combination of these passing visions, the mind may derive a degree of pleasure far superior to that which arises from the immediate impression which they make upon the organ of vision. A very simple piece of machinery is alone necessary for introducing objects of different forms and colours, for varying the direction of the motion across the angular aperture, and for accommodating the velocity of their motion to the effect which it is intended to produce. These combinations of colours and forms may be adapted to a piece of music, and their succession exhibited on a screen by means of the electric, or lime-ball, or other lights to which we have already had occasion to refer. The coloured objects might be fixed between long stripes of glass, moved horizontally or obliquely across the ends of the reflectors; and the effects thus obtained might be varied by the occasional introduction of revolving object-boxes, containing objects of various colours and forms, partly fixed and partly movable. Similar forms in different colours, and in tints of varying intensity, losing and resuming their peculiar character with different velocities, and in different times, might exhibit a distinct relation between the optical and the acoustic phenomena simultaneously presented to the senses. Flashes of light, coloured and colourless, and clouds of different depths of shadow, advancing into, or emerging from the centre of symmetry, or passing across the radial lines of the figure at different obliquities, would assist in marking more emphatically the gay or the gloomy sounds with which they are accompanied.