The last act of the retiring monarch of the day revealed his incomparable skill as a painter. He showed discretion in the selection of the time to demonstrate to the best advantage his matchless artistic skill. He chose the evening hour, when the soul is best prepared to take flight from earthly to heavenly things. He waited until man and beast had laid aside the burden and cares of the day, and were in a receptive, contemplative mood to study and appreciate the paintings suspended from the paling blue dome of the sky.
He waited until he could hide himself from view behind the bank of fleecy clouds moving lazily in the same direction. Then he grasped the invisible palette charged with colors and tints of colors unknown to the artists of this world, and seized the mystic, gigantic brush when
The setting sun, and music at the close.
As the last taste of sweets is sweeted last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past.
SHAKESPEARE.
The time for this magic work was short. The moment the passing clouds veiled his face it began. From the very beginning it became apparent that the hidden artist exhibited superhuman skill. The most appreciative and scrutinizing of his admirers felt powerless to comprehend and much more to give a description of the panoramic views which he painted with such rapid succession on the sky, clouds and the dull surface of the dreamy, listless ocean. With intense interest we watched the constantly varying, artistic display, felt keenly the shortcomings of human art, and realized, to the fullest extent, the force and truth of
Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray.
BYRON.
TWO PAPAYA TREES
All painters place the greatest importance upon a proper background for their pictures in order to give light and shade a strong expression. So does the sun. With a few strokes of the magic brush, the deep blue of the horizon was wiped out and replaced by the palest shade of blue, so as to bring forth, in bolder relief, the resplendent colors on the moving canvas of the clouds. The artist fringed the margins of the clouds with delicate lace of shining gold. Through clefts and rents in the clouds the smiling face of the painter peeped upon the beautiful evening beyond. His work had only begun. In rapid turns the clouds were converted into a sheet of gold with a violet border that deepened into a vivid crimson hue. As the artist disappeared, inch by inch, under the limitless expanse of the ocean, he wiped out the brilliant colors on the canvas of clouds, and gilded the horizon with a sheet of gold, deepening his favorite color, yellow, into an orange hue, which remained unchanged until the approaching darkness threw a drapery of sombre black over the inspiring scene. Twilight shuns the tropics. Day lapses into night almost imperceptibly, and, with the setting of the sun, the earth is wrapped in darkness. There is no compromise in the tropics, between the rulers of day and night. With the disappearance of the last rays of the sun, the pale blue dome of the sky is decorated with millions of flickering stars, casting their feeble light upon land and sea through the immeasurable ethereal medium which separates heaven from earth.
The sun has lost his rage; his downward orb
Shoots nothing now but animating warmth
And vital lustre.
THOMSON.
On the evening of which I speak, the short twilight foreshadowed the appearance of the heavenly advance-guard proclaiming the coming of the Queen of Night.