Between sound and color there is a much closer analogy traceable, as both are the result of vibration. The same language is used to express the qualities of each.
We talk of harmony in sounds and harmony in colors, of lights and shades, of chromatics, blending, softness, sweetness, harshness, high, low, bright, dull, &c.
May not a grand anthem or chorus be to the mind of one who has never seen the light, what a fine picture is to one who has never heard sounds. I should not be surprised to hear that some blind Yankee or Frenchman has invented a telephone through which we can hear in the rippling brooks and bubbling fountains the color of their waters, in the song of birds the gorgeous tints of their plumage, and in the distant roar of Niagara, the mighty grandeur of its scenery. To an imaginative mind a well tuned, well voiced organ may be made to represent all the colors of the rainbow, from the faintest violet of the piccolo to the darkest crimson of the sub-bass. Some blind person on being asked what he supposed red to be like, answered "Like the sound of a trumpet." He might have said "Like a flame of fire." I once asked a blind boy, who had never seen light, if he could imagine a house on fire and how he supposed it would look. He answered, "If it was a big fire it would look like a thousand trumpets all blowing in a different key." I then asked him what a picture is like. "Like anything in _shape_ you may wish to paint," he said, "but in color (if it is a fine picture) like one of Mozart's grand symphonies." I have many times asked my blind lady friends how they knew in what way to arrange their colors so as to make their fancy work look tasty and attractive. How they knew what colors blended and what were discordant, and I have often received this answer: "By associating the names of the seven primary colors with the seven sounds of the diatonic scale, placing red as No. 1 or key note, orange next, yellow next, then green, and so on to violet. Thus red will not blend with orange, being the first and second of the scale, but red and yellow harmonize better, being third in the scale, red and green still better, and so on to red and deep violet, which are sevenths in the scale and do not harmonize. Thus we get the tetrachord red, yellow, blue and violet, which may be represented by the flat seventh of the chord C." But I leave this theory for some one to elaborate or refute, who has seen color, and return to my institution life.