FROM C. J. MONRO, Esq.

  Hadley, 21st March 1871.

     . . . I never observed before that ancient colour-nomenclature was more discriminate than ours for the more     "violently" refracted tints as compared with the less; but I think there must be something in it. But I have always   suspected that they referred colour to a positively distinct set of co-ordinates from ours. Gladstone says something    of this sort in Homer; who put it into his head I can't think; if he made it out for himself I should be very sorry to   agree with a man who does not believe in spectrum analysis, and does believe that Leto is the Virgin Mary. Such  queer applications of words of colour one does find. You know the "pale" horse of the Apocalypse (vi. 8); well,   that is  , which is usually "green," you know. General Daumas says the Arabs call "vert" what the French    call "louvet" in horses; and louvet, in Littré, "Se dit, chez le cheval, d'une robe caractérisée par la présence de    la nuance jaune et du noir, qui lui donne une certaine ressemblance avec le poil du loop. . . .
     Substantivement," he continues, "Le louvet n'est, à proprement parler, qu'un isabelle charbonné." The Arabic for    green, and (I have no doubt) the word Daumas speaks of, is akhdár, kh as ch in Scotch, and the dot marking a    modification which, it happens, is imitated by interpolating an L in Spanish and Portuguese; so    may have    been supposed to have something to do with the Semitic word. However, according to dictionaries, "the three    greens" in Arabic are "gold, wine, and meat," which beats the green horse. I suppose the Revisionists will leave    "pale," and certainly  is the Homeric for a blue funk. But , and akhdár, too, are certainly the  colour of chlorophyll, and Daumas's remark is a note on a line in a translation from a poet, which runs "Ces   chevaux verts comme le roseau qui croît au bord des fleuves."

I am glad you are going to preach, and I should like to sit under you, but as you assume, it would not do. Thanks   all the same.