GIVING THINGS A COLOUR.
REGARD to appearances is a part of taste : as taste advances, men become more careful in bringing their looks, gestures, and habili- ments into accordance with the business they are about. Our very warehouses of ready-made " mourning " dress in black now, as well as the mutes at a funeral. The very walls of the shop are blackened in which hatbands, scarves, and widows' caps are sold to the bereaved by death. Nay, so delicate has the sense of what is fitting in these matters become, that one flourishing establishment in Oxford Street bears black and white " parti per pale," magpie- fashion ; the" maison de deuil" wearing the sombre hue, while " childbed linen" is vended on the cheerful-hued side of the house.
A sense of the aptness of colour to indicate what is to be had within, appears to be extending to other tradesmen as well as these first-cousins of the undertaker. The chemists are naturally foremost in the career of improvement : the colours of their trans- parent glass bottles have in many instances been fixed upon their outer walls, and thus rendered visible by day as well as by night. One establishment near Charing Cross, with its white pilasters standing out from a delicate pink ground, and a broad cross azure band (like the riband of the Garter) to receive the golden-lettered name of the firm, is worthy of Pompeii. It is to be hoped that the taste may become universal. A judicious balance of colours would give life and a finishing-grace to our cold stone and plaster or dull brick houses. Chefs d'eeuvres of architecture, like statues of the highest excellence, may rely upon their own severe perfec- tion of form, and dispense with colours ; but our street architec- ture is not of this high class, or likely to be. Then, the selection of colours would afford delightful scope to the ingenuity of trades- men : they would be as dainty and difficult in choosing as a young man deciding on the device of his valentine. The corn-dealers, as mostly of the Quaker faith, might array their countinghouses in congenial drab; a rich metallic bronze would be appropriate to the notary or stockbroker ; seedsmen and confectioners might be as brilliantly party-coloured as their tulips and bridecakes ; deep yet brilliant port or claret colours would indicate the good cheer of taverns; blue in fishmongers would speak of the "deep, deep sea " ; and marchandes des modes would by a subdued blush colour remind one of "the glow of young desire and purple light of love."
These dainty devices need not be confined to tradesmen and mechanics. The habitations of all ranks might be indicated now, as their arms were of old, by their colours. Scarlet and yellow would bespeak the dwelling of the soldier; white and blue, of a naval officer ; black and white would express the lawn-sleeved gown of the bishop; pale pensive colours would imply the mid- night consumption of oil by a literary resident ; imperial purple, the triumph of statesmen in office, and the red and blue of the Poor Knights of Windsor the short commons of patriots out of place. In our "cold and cloudy clime" we cannot hope to rival the eternal summers of Southern lands ; but by this device we might have a London spring lasting all the year round, and, like Una, "make a sunshine in the shady place," even in the midst of our fogs. London would rival TURNER'S pictures.
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