As the sun sinks, the wet sands are washed with a brownish yellow, the colour of ripe wheat if it could be supposed liquid. The sunset, which has begun with pale hues, flushes over a rich violet, soon again overlaid with orange, and succeeded in its turn by a deep red glow--a glow which looks the deeper the more it is gazed at, like a petal of peony. There are no fair faces in the street now, they are all brunettes, fair complexions and dark skins are alike tinted by the sunset; they are all swarthy. On the sea a dull redness reaches away and is lost in the vapour on the horizon; eastwards great vapours, tinged rosy, stand up high in the sky, and seem to drift inland, carrying the sunset with them; presently the atmosphere round the houses is filled with a threatening light, like a great fire reflected over the housetops. It fades, and there is nothing left but a dark cloud at the western horizon, tinted blood-red along its upper edge. Next morning the sun rises, a ball of orange amid streaks of scarlet. But sometimes the sunset takes other order than this, and after the orange there appears a rayed scarlet crown, such as one sees on old coins--rays of scarlet shoot upward from a common centre above where the sun went down. Sometimes, instead of these brilliant hues, there is the most delicate shading of pearly greys and nameless silver tints, such tints as might be imagined were the clouds like feathers, the art of which is to let the under hue shine through the upper layer of the plumage. Though not so gaudy or at first so striking, these pearl-greys, and silvers, and delicate interweaving of tints are really as wonderful, being graduated and laid on with a touch no camel's hair can approach. Sometimes, again, the sunset shows a burnished sky, like the surface of old copper burnt or oxidised--the copper tinted with rose, or with rose and violet. During the prevalence of the scarlet and orange hues, the moon, then young, shining at the edge of the sunset, appeared faintly green and people remarked how curious a green moon looked on a blue sky, for it was just where the sunset vapour melted into the upper sky. At the same moment the gas-lamps burned green--rows and rows of pale green lights. As the sunset faded both the moon and gas-lamps took their proper hue; hence it appeared as if the change of colour were due to contrast. The gas-lamps had looked greenish several evenings before the new moon shone, and in their case there can be no doubt the tint was contrast merely. One night, some hours after sunset, and long after the last trace of it had disappeared, the moon was sailing through light white clouds, which only partly concealed her, and was surrounded by the ordinary prismatic halo. But outside this halo there was a green circle, a broad green band, very distinct--a pale emerald green. Beautiful and interesting as these sunsets have been, I cannot subscribe to the opinion that they surpass all that have