a certain "eternal fitness," and we shall hardly get a sense of this fitness from anything that is not a faithful portrayal of facts. The ability for such portrayal may be a gift, but we know that some have possessed it. For example, certain portions of Lew Wallace's Ben Hur, vividly and accurately descriptive of oriental lands and scenes, are said to have been written before the author ever visited the particular region.

For models, read the crucifixion scene in the last chapter of Ben Hur, the last chapter of Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, and almost any chapter of George Lippard's Legends of the American Revolution.

PART II.

Composition Based on Reading and

Thought.

Introductory: Principles of Composition.

We shall now enter a field of composition in which writers are too often expected to begin without any preparation such as we have endeavored to obtain. New faculties will be taxed and new powers called into play. Experience and observation are by no means to be set aside, but they are to be supplemented by wider reading and particularly by reflection and independent thought. The material that we have been gathering all along will not be ignored; we shall merely make a different use of it.

We have been recording and chronicling and picturing; storing facts in places accessible to all; fixing permanently the fleeting acts and feelings of the moment; reproducing beautiful forms and colors for future contemplation. Now we must organize these facts, discover the relations they bear to one another, and draw from them, if may be, broader facts which lie beyond the range of ordinary observation; we must transform the material lines and colors into emblems of spiritual beauty, and weave the threads of experience into a philosophy of life. Thus will literature subserve its highest ends.

Of the methods of finding material we spoke in the introduction to Part I. In the meantime we have gone ahead and worked that material into compositions