first to the lower colours of the spectrum, such as the red, orange, &c., and the second to the superior colours, such as the violet, indigo, &c.
The most gloomy tints on the scale are, according to the generally received opinion, those of Nos. 10, 11 and 12, in which the higher colours of the spectrum abound. These colours, it cannot be denied, are also the least bright, and this quality may well be the cause of the gloominess which is felt in viewing them.
It is possible however that there may be in this case an unknown general law, which it would be worth while to investigate with the aid of the analogies afforded by acoustic phænomena, of which the principles are better known.
On the Pathetic and the Cheerful in Music and Painting.
An exclamation or shout of joy consists of notes ascending from the grave to the acute; a cry proceeding from grief or pain consists, on the contrary, of notes descending from the acute to the grave. It is not more singular than true, although it has never before been remarked, that the same notes sung or executed on an instrument will produce in the ascending scale a very different effect from that which they produce in the descending scale. In the first case the feeling excited is decidedly cheerful; in the second it is as decidedly sad. This is a fact which in both a physical and a physiological point of view remains yet unexplained, but may serve nevertheless as a law for all analogous cases.
Violet is a colour which certainly awakes a feeling of sadness. Can it be owing to a similar law that it produces such a sensation? I inspect the table of imaginary colours, and find that the green-yellow corresponds to the violet. We know that according to the theory of vibrations the violet is produced by shorter and the red by longer vibrations. The transition then from the violet, which is the real colour, to the green-yellow, which is the imaginary, is a transition from the acute to the grave, and analogous to that which takes place in the notes that produce sadness. The only difference between the two cases is, that in the one the sensation is the direct and immediate effect of the notes conveyed to the ear from without, whilst in the other the eye receives from without nothing more than the impression of the violet colour, the rest of the effect depending on the internal action of the optical nerves which are endowed with the power of passing of themselves from the real to the imaginary colour. A difference of this kind however is not incompatible with the existence of the analogy: it only leads to the inference that the eye possesses the more exquisite sensibility, since in this organ a mere disposition or tendency is sufficient to produce an effect which in the ear is due to an external cause: for, the superior delicacy of the eye is evidently the cause of the existence of these imaginary colours, which have
