Now, in the case we have been considering, the scientific view is surely as beautiful as the ordinary one. We can, it is true, no longer regard the objects as having in themselves the colours which common observation attributes to them, but we look upon the material world as being, so to speak, the neutral canvas upon which Light, the great painter, spreads his varied tints, although, unlike the real canvas of an artist, which is not only neutral, but receives indifferently whatever hues are laid upon it, the objects around us exercise a selective effect—as if the picture of Nature were produced by each part of the canvas refusing all the tints save one, but itself supplying none. The tendency of the study of science to increase our interest in the great spectacle of Nature, and to enhance our appreciation of her charms, has been more justly indicated by another poet—thus: