used to soften and blend the artificial with the natural objects, and then how sharply they all stand out in the sunlight. How is the point of view taken at the beginning?

EXERCISE XXX.

NATURE IN ACTIVITY.

A Sunrise at Sea.
Niagara Falls.

A Thunderstorm.
A Windy Day.

Subjects:

The Johnstown Flood.
Through a Forest Fire.

A Prairie Fire.

The Recent Earthquake.

These subjects may seem to suggest only the most striking phenomena of nature and the great ravages which her forces effect. Such, it is true, make stronger impressions on the observer and awaken keener interest in the reader, so that they are favorite subjects for description. But do not allow familiarity or indifference to blind you to the striking aspects of nature's changing mood as exhibited about you daily. The sunrise from your window may be as beautiful as any at sea. The storm that breaks fiercely over your head may be little less sublime than that which hurtles about the peaks and careers down the valleys of the Alps.

Descriptions of this class do not often have for their design the mere imparting of information. That is, they are not usually of a scientific character, but rather of a literary or artistic one. The object is to interest and please the reader, to create in his mind, in all its

original vividness, the picture which the writer has seen, and to arouse in him the same emotions which the writer has felt. To compass this object in any satisfactory degree requires the use of considerably "heightened" language; for the strongest words are but weak picture-makers compared with the flying clouds and the everlasting hills. We use this heightened language whenever we introduce words or expressions that seem elevated above or in any way removed from the sphere of sober thought and simple feeling. Among other things, figures of speech, -simile and metaphor, personification, exclamation, apostrophe, antithesis, — are naturally and freely resorted to. We call these ornaments of speech, and say they serve to give the artistic touches that we desire.

Let us see now, if we can, just in what consist true artistic or literary touches, these ornaments of composition. Are we at liberty to adopt anything that is in itself ornamental? Can we always depend upon its giving a happy effect? How is it in art in general? How is it in life? Why are you not charmed with the savage's paint and feathers? Why does a costly watch chain not displease you, while a pair of diamond earrings does, and even a showy finger ring, in these days when seals are no more, sets you thinking? You say these things offend a cultivated taste. What is a cultivated taste? Shall we say that, whatever else it may be, it is a taste that takes delight in things ornamental only when they at the same time plainly serve some ulterior end? If this is not the truth it is somewhere near it. Thus much we may safely say that in literature, as in art in general, as in all the avenues of life,

that which is artificial and purely ornamental may be enjoyed and even tolerated only when it does not so much shine with its own beauty as lend luster to that which it is intended to beautify. Every ornament must fit naturally in or appear to spring from what it adorns. You may not with impunity force a figure of speech into a composition; it must seem to belong there by natural right. There will be the same difference in effect that there is between the paint on the society woman's cheek and the color in the school-girl's. You could not take Wordsworth's ponderous figure,

A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved,

and insert it in one of Shelley's delicate descriptions. If your figures help to convey to your readers your own impressions, if your heightened language actually arouses in them the emotions you desire to arouse, well and good. But be chary of ornament for ornament's sake.

MODELS.

THE TORNADO.

Soon the stars are hidden. A light breeze seems rather to tremble and hang poised than to blow. The rolling clouds, the dark wilderness, and the watery waste shine out every moment in the wide gleam of lightnings still hidden by the wood, and are wrapped again in ever-thickening darkness over which thunders roll and jar and answer one another across the sky. Then, like a charge of ten thousand lancers, come the wind and the rain, their onset covered by all the artillery of heaven. The lightnings leap, hiss, and blaze; the thunders crack and roar; the rain lashes; the waters writhe; the wind smites and howls. For five, for ten, for twenty minutes - for an hour, for two hours the sky and the flood are never for an instant wholly dark, or the thunder for one moment silent; but while the universal roar sinks and swells,

and the wide, vibrant illumination shows all things in ghostly half-concealment, fresh floods of lightning every moment rend the dim curtain and leap forth; the glare of day falls upon the swaying wood, the reeling, bowing, tossing willows, the seething waters, the whirling rain, and in the midst the small form of the distressed steamer, her revolving paddle-wheels toiling behind to lighten the strain upon her anchor chains; then all are dim ghosts again, while a peal, as if the heavens were rent, rolls off around the sky, comes back in shocks and throbs, and sinks in a long roar that before it can die is swallowed up in the next flash and peal. George W. Cable, in Bonaventure (Au Large, chapter xviii.).

CLEARING WEATHER.

It was a warm autumn afternoon, and there had been a heavy rain. The sun burst suddenly from among the clouds; and the old battle-ground, sparkling brilliantly and cheerfully at sight of it in one green place, flashed a responsive welcome there, which spread along the country side as if a joyful beacon had been lighted up, and answered from a thousand stations.

How beautiful the landscape kindling in the light, and that luxuriant influence passing on like a celestial presence, brightening everything! The wood, a sombre mass before, revealed its varied tints of yellow, green, brown, red: its different forms of trees, with rain-drops glittering on their leaves and twinkling as they fell. The verdant meadow-land, bright and glowing, seemed as if it had been blind a minute since, and now had found a sense of light wherewith to look up at the shining sky. Cornfields, hedge-rows, fences, homesteads, the clustered roofs, the steeple of the church, the stream, the watermill, all sprang out of the gloomy darkness, smiling. Birds sang sweetly, flowers raised their drooping heads, fresh scents arose from the invigorated ground; the blue expanse above extended and diffused itself: already the sun's slanting rays pierced mortally the sullen bank of cloud that lingered in its flight; and a rainbow, spirit of all the colors that adorned the earth and sky, spanned the whole arch with its triumphant glory.—Charles Dickens, in Christmas Books (The Battle of Life, part iii.).

The following descriptions may be read with profit: Sunrise in Venice. Poem by Joaquin Miller.

High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire. Poem by Jean Ingelow. The Flood. The Mill on the Floss, book vii, chapter v. George Eliot.

Storm off the Coast of Scotland. Macleod of Dare, last chapter. William Black.

The difficulties of these descriptions will be greater of course in proportion as the object represents a higher stage of development in its own field of art. There is a vast difference between a Kafir hut and a Gothic cathedral, between an Indian stone image and a Praxitelean statue. The Kafir hut may be picturesque enough in its way, but it is not a work of art and is not intended to be; it is built for its utility. On the other hand a cathedral is useful in its way, but it is preeminently a work of art. In form and color, in light and shade, in mass and perspective, it is designed throughout to appeal to the aesthetic sense and to work on the emotions of the human heart. As a work of art therefore it must be described. We have