U, purple.

Y, a dingier colour than I.

“The shorter sounds of the vowels are less vivid and pure in colour.  Consonants are almost or quite colourless to me, though there is some blackness about M.

“Some association with U in the words blue and purple may account for that colour, and possibly the E in red may have to do with that also; but I feel as if they were independent of suggestions of the kind.

“My first impulse is to say that the association lies solely in the sound of the vowels, in which connection I certainly feel it the most strongly; but then the thought of the distinct redness of such a [printed or written] word as ‘great’ shows me that the relation must be visual as well as aural.  The meaning of words is so unavoidably associated with the sight of them, that I think this association rather overrides the primitive impression of the colour of the vowels, and the word ‘violet’ reminds me of its proper colour until I look at the word as a mere collection of letters.

“Of my two daughters, one sees the colours quite differently from this (A, blue; E, white; I, black; O, whity-brownish; U, opaque brown).  The other is only heterodox on the A and O; A being with her black, and O white.  My sister and I never agreed about these colours, and I doubt whether my two brothers feel the chromatic force of the vowels at all.”

I give this instance partly on account of the hereditary interest.  I could add cases from at least three different families in which the heredity is quite as strongly marked.

Fig. 69 fills the whole of the middle column of Plate IV., and contains specimens from a large series of coloured illustrations, accompanied by many pages of explanation from a correspondent, Dr. James Key of Montagu, Cape Colony.  The pictures will tell their own tale sufficiently well.  I need only string together a few brief extracts from his letters, as follows:—­

“I confess my inability to understand visualised numerals; it is otherwise, however, with regard to colour associations with letters.  Ever since childhood these have been distinct and unchanging in my consciousness; sometimes, although very seldom, I have mentioned them, to the amazement of my teachers and the scorn of my comrades.  A is brown.  I say it most dogmatically, and nothing will ever have the effect, I am convinced, of making it appear otherwise!  I can imagine no explanation of this association. [He goes into much detail as to conceivable reasons connected with his childish life to show that none of these would do.] Shades of brown accompany to my mind the various degrees of openness in pronouncing A. I have never been destitute in all my conscious existence of a conviction that E is a clear, cold, light-gray blue.  I remember daubing in colours, when quite a little child, the picture of a jockey, whose shirt received a large share of E, as I said to myself while daubing it with grey. [He thinks that the letter I may possibly be associated with black because it contains no open space, and O with white because it does.] The colour of R has been invariably of a copper colour, in which a swarthy blackness seems to intervene, visually corresponding to the trilled pronunciation of R. This same appearance exists also in J, X, and Z.”