that Nature is inexorable in her laws of colours,
and will not be trifled with with impunity. If
black is worn near the face, it will make faces
pale, just as deep red will rob rosy cheeks of
their bloom and make them look almost wanting
in colour; brown makes a face bricky. It was
ordained so when the rainbow was made, and it
will ever be so. Green and yellow together will
always be a hideous contrast, just as blue and
green are. Red and green, and red and blue,
will always be pleasant to the eye. It is true,
Nature can make any two colours agree; but
then it is by the subtle way in which she mixes
her proportions. All sorts of chemists had
experimented on aniline, obtaining it from indigo,
coal tar, and the decomposition of all sorts of
nitrogenised substances. It was known to be
oily and colourless, with a pleasant vinous smell,
and a burning aromatic taste. It was known to
evaporate easily, to turn the dahlia juice green,
mixed with hydrochloric acid to strike fir-wood
deep yellow, to form with a solution of bleaching
powder a deep but fugitive purple. But
here stepped in Mr. Perkins, fixed the dye, and
carried off the imperial purple on his shoulders,
as he well deserved. Alchemists of old spent
their days and nights searching for gold, and
never found the magic Proteus, though they
chased him through all gases and all metals. If
they had, indeed, we doubt much if the discovery
had been as useful as this of Perkins's purple.

Whatever has colour must have a dye, though
it may be too expensive to extract; and, when
extracted, too fugitive, or too opaque, or too
pale, or too light. The alchemist of to-day has
grown practical, and works for the Manchester
factory. A discovery that benefits trade is
better for a man than finding a gold mine. It
is, in fact, like this Perkins's purple, the key to
other men's gold mines.

Purple has always been a royal and favoured
colour, though selected by Nature to clothe the
little wayside violet. The Tyrians sent it in ships,
and on camels' backs, all over the world to clothe
kings and adorn emperors. The murex, or sea-
fish, from which they obtained their purple, had
been for centuries before their discovery of its
use, the mere mussel that fishermen ate, longing
for the richer food of the "lubbers" on land.
The use had slumbered in the shell, thrown in
heaps to rot upon the Tyrian shore, till some
thoughtful knife scraped and scratched till it hit
upon the receipt Nature had written on it in
purple ink; just so before Perkins, thousands of
chemists sniffed and tasted coal tar, observing
its scientific first cousinship with the oil of bitter
almonds, and the benzine collas with which
certain manufacturers, wishing to avoid the srnell
of naphtha, clean white kid gloves, without ever
sniffing out this profitable secret. The rich dye
was there, as the rose of morning flows in the
dark cheek of night, yet is not visible till that
great discoverer the sun comes, and looks for his
bride at the daybreak.

Lucky Mr. Perkins, favoured Mr. Perkins, to
be smiled at by Belgrave angels, and to have
the colours of thy election admired by the houris
of The Row! Knights of old broke each other's
ribs, and let out each other's blood, dying happily
amid a heap of shivered armour, so that their
ladies' colours still waved from their helmet, or
sopped up the blood oozing from their gaping
heart wounds; but you, Mr. Perkins, luckier
than they, rib unbroken, skull uncracked, can
itinerate Regent-street and perambulate the
Parks, seeing the colours of thy heart waving
on every fair head and fluttering round every
cheek!

One would think that London was suffering
from an election, and that those purple ribbons
were synonymous with "Perkins for hever!"
and "Perkins and the English Constitootion!"
The Oxford-street windows are tapestried with
running rolls of that luminous extract from
coal tar; knots of ribbon, the white shining
through the pure and clarified purple, hang
from the dégagé hoods of the Right Honourable
Mrs. Bellwether and all the Miss Bellwethers
as they fill the Bellwether barouche, like a
nosegay of purple stocks, and roll down Baker-
street towards the thinning Park. It decorates
in streamers Mrs. Collywabble's bonnet (Mr.
C. is M.P. for a Cornish borough), those
streamers Mrs. C. flutters through the grey
cobweb air of Latakia-square as if it was the
Collywabble banner, and she was preceding a
band of pure Pollywiggle electors to the
Pollywiggle poll.

O Mr. Perkins, thanks to thee, too, for clothing,
as with a stainer, the little wax hands of
the belle of the season, who, riding through
Decomposition-row towards Kensington on band
days, maketh it a desert, the cavaliers following
her as if her chesnut mare were a magic horse
hammered out of a magnet. Thanks to thee,
too, for fishing out of the coal-hole those
precious veins and stripes and bands of purple on
summer gowns that, wafting gales of Frangipanni,
charm us in the West-end streets, luring
on foolish bachelors to sudden proposals and
dreams of love and a cottage loaf. As I look
out of my window now, the apotheosis of Perkins's
purple seems at hand—purple hands wave from
open carriages—purple hands shake each other
at street doors—purple hands threaten each
other from opposite sides of the street; purple
striped gowns cram barouches, jam up cabs,
throng steamers, fill railway stations: all flying
countryward, like so many purple birds of
migrating Paradise; purple ribbons fill the
windows, purple gowns circle out at shop
entrances, purple feather fans beckon to you in
windows. We shall soon have purple omnibuses
and purple houses; there is everywhere a glut
of this white and violet, which is a great deal
more agreeable than perpetual partridge.

When I see a mild fever, like this gentle,
fashionable insanity for Perkins's purple, I
wonder at the unhappy limitations which Nature
has assigned to the lower animals. They cannot
take to new fashions; they cannot go to this ball
in rose pink, and to the next in clove red and
black lace. They cannot tie their hair in cabbage-
nets or dumpling-bags, and then sprinkle