I can only give you qualified and cautious answer. There are, by differences in their own character, Dominican clouds, and there are Franciscan;—there are the Black Hussars of the Bandiera della Morte, and there are the Scots Grays whose horses can run upon the rock. But if you ask me, as I would have you ask me, why argent and why sable, how baptized in white like a bride or a novice, and how hooded with blackness like a Judge of the Vehmgericht Tribunal,—I leave these questions with you, and pass on.

Admitting degrees of darkness, we have next to ask what color, from sunshine can the white cloud receive, and what the black?

You won't expect me to tell you all that, or even the little that is accurately known about that, in a quarter of an hour; yet note these main facts on the matter.

On any pure white, and practically opaque, cloud, or thing like a cloud, as an Alp, or Milan Cathedral, you can have cast by rising or setting sunlight, any tints of amber, orange, or moderately deep rose—you can't have lemon yellows, or any kind of green except in negative hue by opposition; and though by stormlight you may sometimes get the reds cast very deep, beyond a certain limit you cannot go,—the Alps[12] are never vermilion color, nor flamingo color, nor canary color; nor did you ever see a full scarlet cumulus of thundercloud.

On opaque white vapor, then, remember, you can get a glow or a blush of color, never a flame of it.

But when the cloud is transparent as wel