iliilillliUM!!' 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ENGLISH COLLECTION 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 JAMES MORGAN HART 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGUSH 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 arV14518 
 
 A course in expository writinc 
 
 3 1924 031 387 743 
 olin,anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tlnis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031387743 
 
A COURSE IN ARGUMENTATIVE WRIT- 
 ING. By Gertrude Buck, Ph.D., 
 Instructor in English at Vassar Col- 
 lege. i2mo. 80 cents, net. 
 
 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 By Gertrude Buck, Ph.D. {Uni- 
 versity of Michigan), and ELISABETH 
 Woodbridge, Ph.D. {Yale), Instruct- 
 ors in English at Vassar College. i2mo. 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO., Publishers 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
A COURSE IN 
 
 EXPOSITORY WRITING 
 
 BY 
 
 GERTRUDE BUCK, Ph.D. 
 
 (University of" Michigan) 
 
 ELISABETH WOODBRIDGE, Ph.D. 
 
 "' (Yale) 
 Instructors in English at Vassar College 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1899 
 
 T 
 
Copyright^ 1899, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. 
 
 ROBERT DBUMMONO, PRINTER, NEW YORK 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The English teacher, more perhaps than any other, is 
 consciously aiming, not to give his students information, 
 but to make them acquire capacity, — capacity, in this 
 case, for expressing their thought to others. But it is 
 only by writing that the student can learn to write well, 
 though much writing may not teach this, and one of the 
 difficulties which an English teacher has to meet is a no 
 less fundamental one than the difficulty of getting his 
 students to write at all — to write, that is, not perfunc- 
 torily, but spontaneously, for this is the only kind of 
 writing that counts. 
 
 This difficulty has its source, at least very largely, in 
 the student's sense of the artificial character of his work. 
 What is the use, he thinks, of writing about the birth- 
 place of Hawthorne, or the character of Lady Macbeth ? 
 His teacher knows all about them beforehand, and 
 besides, he isn't writing to his teacher, he isn't writing to 
 anybody, he is just " writing a composition " that is to 
 be corrected for spelling, punctuation, paragraphing; or 
 for its lack of certain qualities, such, as "clearness," 
 ' ' precision, ' ' and ' ' unity. ' ' No wonder he finds it hard 
 to write. We ourselves, when alone, do not usually talk 
 aloud about the things around us, describe the picture 
 before us, or the desk, or the view. We should feel 
 " silly " to be talking to nobody. Why should we expect 
 
iV PREFACE. 
 
 a child to talk to nobody on paper? He feels " silly" 
 too, or at least uncomfortable. But give him somebody 
 to talk to, a real audience, and a subject that his audience 
 is interested in, and his whole attitude will change. Tell 
 him to " describe a game of basket-ball," and he will be 
 lifeless enough ; but find some classmates who like foot- 
 ball better, and tell him to describe the game to them so 
 as to convert them, or let each side try to convert the 
 other, with the class as judge, — then he has something 
 worth doing. Evidently it is the subject, as well as the 
 audience, that has been wrong; give a boy or girl some- 
 thing that he — not we — calls " interesting," and give him 
 somebody who is interested, or whom he must make 
 interested, and he will write for you. Not that ' ' the 
 character of Lady Macbeth " is in itself an unfit subject. 
 Take a class studying Macbeth for college preparatory 
 work and set them talking about the characters. Some 
 will pity Macbeth and despise his lady, others will feel 
 differently; discussion will arise, sides will be taken. 
 Before they have reached a decision, tell each student to 
 defend his opinion in writing ; the results will be spirited, 
 and the effect of the writing, when read to the class, will 
 be eagerly watched, while if a little argument creeps into 
 the exposition, no harm is done. 
 
 All sorts of such devices can be found to provide the 
 students with an audience, and of course it will be best of 
 all if they feel that the teacher himself is a real, not a sham, 
 audience; that he is listening for what they have to say, as 
 well as holding himself ready to correct the way they say 
 it. And when the students have got a little out of the 
 old rut of " writing compositions " addressed to nobody, 
 and have had some experience in writing to real readers, 
 they will be able to imagine audiences for themselves, and 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 write with vigor to these hypothetical hearers. They will 
 describe a football game " to a boy who was on the team 
 last year," or " to a gentleman who doesn't want his son 
 to play, but may be persuaded to let him," etc., etc. In 
 the following pages the subjects suggested for writing 
 have not always had their specific audience thus defined, 
 because this can often be better done by the teacher him- 
 self so as to appeal most successfully to the particular 
 students he is dealing with. 
 
 Supposing, then, that by various means the teacher has 
 got some spirited writing from his students; this writing 
 must be criticised, and how shall it be done without 
 dampening their ardor and losing everything that has 
 been gained ? 
 
 This problem, which is indeed a hard one, has been 
 partly solved in supplying a real audience. For the test of 
 writing is its effect on the audience. If the student knows 
 his audience, and can measure the effect he produces, he 
 has a means not merely of knowing, in a general way, that 
 his writing is " weak " or " ineffective," but of discover- 
 ing just what is the difference between the kind of effect 
 it actually produces and the kind he meant it to produce; 
 and he will be ready and able to go back to his writing 
 and find the causes of his failure. If his account of 
 basket-ball is not convincing, the question naturally comes 
 up, ' ' why ? ' ' and he is directed back to his writing to 
 find out the trouble. 
 
 The more the students can thus be made to supply 
 their own criticism, the better will be the results; and to 
 this end, all kinds of devices will be of use — exchange of 
 papers between students, descriptions read aloud where 
 the class does not know the subject but must recognize it 
 from the account there given, and so on. Any means 
 
Vi PREFACE. 
 
 whatever is worth using which may make the student 
 himself understand the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of 
 his work. For example, the description of the rose, cited 
 on pages 16-17 of this book, was criticised by making 
 some rough water-color sketches from it, representing the 
 successive images that actually came to the teacher's mind 
 as she read the paragraph. Again, some descriptions, 
 written by the students, of the main entrance to a build- 
 ing, were sent away to an architect who made sketches 
 from them. The results gave the clearest possible evi- 
 dence as to just how far the descriptions had been suc- 
 cessful and in what way they had failed. 
 
 When this kind of thing cannot be done, verbal 
 sketches may be substituted, where the teacher or a fellow- 
 student tries to give back in other words the impression 
 he has received. For example, a college student wrote a 
 description of a summer lake which was, as the Scotch 
 say, ' ' throughither. ' ' But how make the writer not only 
 see this, but do it better.? The teacher said: " Now, I 
 am going to tell you what you have made me see. This 
 is the picture I get as I read : first I see a narrow lake, 
 etc., — and houses over there, etc. ; " but after a few sen- 
 tences she was interrupted by the astonished student, — 
 " But it isn't narrow, it's wide; and the houses aren't that 
 way, they're — " and she went on with a really intelligible 
 account. The realization of how completely she had 
 been misunderstood, gained in this way, did not discour- 
 age her, it stimulated her into immediate and more 
 intelligent effort. Her audience was before her, she had 
 seen the effect she produced, and this gave her the power 
 to do better. 
 
 Furthermore, criticism is apt to be discouraging because 
 it considers too many things at once. The student has 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 a hopeless feeling that he is all wrong, and he does not 
 know which of his numberless vices to reform first. 
 Usually, in grades of work where this book would be 
 used, the simpler principles of punctuation and the rules 
 of spelling ought to be observed as a matter of course, 
 although a case is conceivable where it would be better to 
 let even spelling go to the winds for a while, until other 
 things had been gained. Taking these for granted, criti- 
 cism will do well to attend to one thing at a time, and 
 the rational order of progress would be, of course, from 
 the large questions to details, from the fundamental 
 matters of structure or plan, the developing of the main 
 possibilities in a subject, to the details of finish, questions 
 of emphasis needing delicate discrimination and shading. 
 It is best to begin with paragraphs, and come later on to 
 sentences and phrases and words. Beginning with the 
 big things, the little things will many of them right them- 
 selves, and those that do not, can wait. 
 
 And in general it may be suggested that it is always 
 best, not first to tell a student how to write a thing, and 
 then bid him do it, but first to get him to do it, and 
 afterwards to let him see how it was done. Take, for 
 example, the various forms of the paragraph, — the para- 
 graph ' ' by method of specific instance " or by " method 
 of contrast. " These forms have arisen because they were 
 the best ones for the treatment of a given subject; give 
 the student such a subject and he is more than likely to 
 drop naturally into this form. Tell him to write a paper 
 about the intelligence of his dog or cat or parrot, and 
 if he does not do it by the method of " specific instance " 
 he is a remarkable boy. Or tell him to discuss the 
 comparative merits of setters and collies; he cannot help 
 domg it by the method of " contrast. " Having dropped 
 
vui PREFACE. 
 
 into the form, he will be interested in seeing how better 
 writers than he have used it, and will get hints from them 
 as to ways of making his own work more efiective, while 
 at the same time he will come to realize that writing is 
 not made from rules, but rules are discovered in writing. 
 
 In the following lessons, few explicit directions are 
 given for detailed work on paragraphs and sentences. 
 For such work Scott and Denney's Composition-Rhetoric 
 may profitably be used as a guide. * 
 
 * The same text-book, it should be said, makes practical use 
 of the principles laid down in this preface, as to the furnishing 
 of an audience for the students' writing. A pamphlet by 
 Mr. Joseph V. Denney, entitled "Two Problems of Composi- 
 tion-Teaching" (in the series of Contributions to Rhetorical 
 Theory, edited by Prof. F. N. Scott), embodies similar sugges- 
 tions. Mr. Robert Herrick's " Method of Teaching Rhetoric in 
 Schools" (Scott, Foresman & Co., 378-388 Wabash Avenue, 
 Chicago) has also been largely drawn upon by the writers. 
 
 The idea of using pictorial material as subject-matter of ex- 
 pository writing has been borrowed from the practice of Pro- 
 fessor T. N. Scott in his classes at the University of Michigan. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface iii 
 
 Chapter I. The Basis of Exposition i 
 
 Lesson I 6 
 
 II. The Process of Description 9 
 
 Lesson II 29 
 
 Lesson III 30 
 
 Lesson IV 33 
 
 Lesson V 36 
 
 Lesson VI 41 
 
 Lesson VII 48 
 
 III. Description in its Relation to Exposition 56 
 
 Lesson VIII 87 
 
 Lesson IX 90 
 
 Lesson X 97 
 
 Lesson XI 103 
 
 Lesson XII 115 
 
 Lesson XIII 140 
 
 Lesson XIV 150 
 
 Lesson XV 151 
 
 IV. Definition in its Relation to Exposition 156 
 
 Lesson XVI I77 
 
 Lesson XVII 205 
 
 Lesson XVIII 220 
 
 Lesson XIX 255 
 
 Lesson XX 273 
 
 Lesson XXI 284 
 
 Lesson XXII 287 
 
 Lesson XXIII 290 
 
 ix 
 
A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE BASIS OF EXPOSITION. 
 
 All language, written or spoken, has one object: to 
 put the person addressed in possession of certain ideas, to 
 make him possess those ideas as firmly as though he had 
 arrived at them independently. We have seen a beautiful 
 orchid, our friend has not seen it, and we try to make 
 language take the place of experience for him ; in common 
 parlance, we ' ' try to make him see it. ' ' Or, there is a 
 practical issue before us; our friend wants to go trout- 
 fishing, and we know a certain pool that has not been 
 fished out. We could take him there, but that is not 
 feasible, and we fall back upon language to put him in 
 possession of the ideas he needs to have. Perhaps, how- 
 ever, he has never been trout-fishing, and does not 
 know a trout when he sees it. " How can I tell one when 
 I catch him ? " he asks, and we try to tell him how. 
 
 In making these attempts to substitute something else 
 in place of actual experience, we usually feel that a certain 
 degree of success is attainable, — that if we do not succeed, 
 it is not because the thing cannot be done, but because 
 we do not know how to do it. That is, we have consider- 
 
2 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 able faith in the power of language as a medium of com- 
 munication. The word "trout" may not mean to our 
 friend what it does to us, but the word " speckled " may, 
 and by choosing such words as we both understand to 
 explain those we do not, we can quickly increase our 
 stock of trustworthy terms. 
 
 But why do we believe that any terms are trustworthy ? 
 We have reached this belief by a process of experience, 
 begun long before we began to talk, whose basis is a 
 belief that fundamentally other people are like ourselves. 
 Some one points out a red pillow and says " red! red ! " 
 We look at the pillow and are conscious of a peculiar 
 color-sensation, and soon we not only associate the word 
 with this sensation, but we also believe that other people 
 will do the same, and that when they say "red" they 
 have the same sensation that we have. That is, we 
 believe that they see things as we do, and think about 
 them as we do. So strong does this conviction become, 
 that where it does not seem to be justified we usually 
 conclude that the difficulty has arisen either because we 
 are not really talking about the same thing, or else 
 because we are not really speaking the same language. 
 
 And so, when we have seen the orchid that our friend 
 has not, we believe that we can really help him to see it, — 
 that we can by means of certain words really call up to 
 his mind certain perceptions of form and color which the 
 flower itself would have called up if he had seen it. We 
 have the same confidence when we set about telling our 
 fisherman how he can know a trout when he sees it. The 
 problem is, to be sure, a little different from that of the 
 orchid, because instead of describing some one trout, we 
 must give him an account that will fit any trout he may 
 catch, and so we must mention only such traits as all 
 
THE B.4SIS OF EXPOSITION. 3 
 
 trout, in distinction from all other fish, are sure to 
 possess. We may say: "They're six to ten inches long, 
 with roundish bodies — not fiat like sunfish — and rather 
 long for their breadth; and they have a smooth skin — no 
 scales that you can see — pale gray, and speckled along 
 the sides with pretty pink and silver dots, but the color 
 varies a good deal, some are brighter than others; and 
 they're gamey ! " 
 
 Here, we are not exactly trying to call up a definite 
 image such as would be called up by any particular trout, 
 for each trout would call up an image distinct from every 
 other; it would not be " six to twelve inches long," but, 
 say, seven and a quarter, or nine and a half. But though 
 we are giving a general, rather than a specific description, 
 still we are recalling and using the phrases of sense-experi- 
 ence, we are going back to impressions of form and color. 
 
 One word used, however, ' ' gamey, ' ' is rather more 
 remote from these impressions, and it may bring us into 
 difficulty. Our hearer looks a bit incredulous : "Gamey! 
 In a brook three feet wide! Guess you don't mean what 
 I mean by gamey. Bluefish are gamey." "Well, "we 
 may answer, " I don't know what^oa mean by gamey, 
 and I've never caught bluefish, but the other day I got a 
 ten-inch trout in that pool who bent my pole double — " 
 and we go on to tell our experience. What have we done 
 this time ? We found a difficulty with what is called an 
 ' ' abstract term, ' ' indicating an ' ' abstract ' ' quality — 
 gaminess — and we met the difficulty by going back to a 
 concrete experience — one of many through which we our- 
 selves got our perception of this "abstract" quality. 
 Here, being back in the realm of immediate, concrete 
 experience, we felt ourselves once more on firm ground; 
 quickly and confidently we put the skeptic in possession 
 
4 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 of this experience, trusting that it would mean to him 
 what it did to us. 
 
 For all our own convictions have been gained through 
 sense-experience, and we unconsciously recognize this 
 when we revert to experience in communicating with 
 others. The farther removed we are from the direct testi- 
 mony of the senses, the more liability there is to mis- 
 understandings, and these can best be cleared up by 
 reverting again to sense-experience. When this cannot 
 be done, we are lost indeed. Suppose that in discussing 
 some question of beauty or taste, I find myself differing 
 with my companion ; to settle the trouble, we resort to a 
 concrete instance, and at once I discover that my com- 
 panion is partially color-blind. Instantly I realize that 
 no matter how long I talk, I can never really communi- 
 cate to him certain ideas whose foundation is in our 
 color-sense, for there is nothing more fundamental, where 
 we can find a common meeting-ground, and from which 
 we can attempt an explanation. I may discover that his 
 sense of hearing agrees with mine, and perhaps I may 
 appeal to that and tell him that " red is like the sound of 
 a trumpet, " or I may appeal to his sense of temperature, 
 and tell him that red is ' ' hot ' ' and green is ' ' cool, ' ' but 
 so long as he cannot practically tell green from red, what 
 use is it .? And how can I hope that the line. 
 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
 
 will ever have for him the associative meaning that it has 
 for me .? Such difference in sense-perception is funda- 
 mental and insurmountable. 
 
 Aside from differences of this sort, which probably 
 exist among us all, though not to this extent, there are 
 secondary differences in people, which while they do not 
 
THE BASIS OF EXPOSITION. 5 
 
 preclude an ultimate understanding, do condition the way 
 in which it can be reached. Two sportsmen, for instance, 
 who have hunted through the same kind of country, do 
 not need to get back to primitive sensations to establish 
 their starting-point — they have had many common ex- 
 periences, have therefore reached similar convictions in 
 regard to things, and can talk to one another by short 
 cuts of suggestion, assuming much that to a layman 
 would have to be elaborately explained. Imagine one of 
 these congenial spirits talking to a society girl, who says, 
 ' ' Do tell me about your hunting. ' ' Where shall he 
 begin.? Evidently, "at first principles," that is, with 
 such sense-appeal as he judges she can understand, though 
 indeed he may feel that she has as much need of a " sixth 
 sense" as our color-blind person had need of a fifth. 
 The two cases might be represented thus : 
 
 Fig. I. 
 
6 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 The case is supposed, simply to emphasize the necessity, 
 if we really wish not merely to talk but to communicate 
 ideas, that we shall know whom we are talking to, what 
 his experience has been, and how far it has been parallel 
 with ours. 
 
 In the following discussion, therefore, one thing has 
 been taken for granted : namely, that the impressions of 
 our eyes and ears and other sense-organs are the basis of 
 our knowledge; rightly understood, they are our knowl- 
 edge. Hence, although e.xpository writing aims to com- 
 municate to others our interpretation of sense-experience, 
 — which we may call knowledge or opinion according to 
 the degree of our conviction, — yet we shall understand 
 its principles best if we approach it through a study of 
 description, which is the communication of our imme- 
 diate sense-experience itself. 
 
 LESSON 1. 
 
 1. Cite one or two instances in which you have tried to 
 convey an idea to some one else, and try to account for 
 your success or failure.* 
 
 2. Recall cases in which other people have tried to 
 convey ideas to you, and explain their success or failure. 
 In some given case where they failed, how do you think 
 they ought to have appealed to you to have been success- 
 ful .? 
 
 3. In any of these cases, how would the way of going 
 
 * This should of course be narrowed by the teacher, so that 
 it may not seem vague and unsuggestive. Either the audience 
 should be specified — the idea was to be conveyed to one's 
 father, or little brother, or a schoolmate ; or the idea — you 
 were talking about golf, or a lesson, or the last school exami- 
 nation ; or both subject and idea may be defined. 
 
THE BASIS OF EXPOSITION. 7 
 
 to work have been modified if the person addressed had 
 been different? (e.g., if, instead of a fellow-student, hf 
 had been a day-laborer, or a newsboy, or a shop-girl, 
 etc. ) .? 
 
 4. The following passages occur near the beginning of 
 an address on "Technical Education" delivered by 
 Huxley to a working men's club. What is their value 
 to the exposition that is to follow ? 
 
 " Technical education " . . . is, in fact, a fine Greco- 
 Latin equivalent for what in good vernacular English 
 would be called " the teaching of handicrafts." . . . 
 
 ' ' I am, and have been, any time these thirty years, a 
 man who works with his hands — a handicrafts-man. I 
 do not say this in the broadly metaphorical sense in which 
 fine gentlemen, with all the delicacy of Agag about them, 
 trip to the hustings about election time, and protest that 
 they too are working men. I really mean my words to 
 be taken in their direct, literal, and straightforward sense. 
 In fact, if the most nimble-fingered watchmaker among 
 you will come to my workshop, he may set me to put a 
 watch together, and I will set him to dissect, say, a 
 blackbeetle's nerves. I do not wish to vaunt, but I am 
 inclined to think that I shall manage my job to his satis- 
 faction sooner than he will do his piece of work to mine. 
 
 " In truth, anatomy, which is my handicraft, is one of 
 the most difficult kinds of mechanical labor, involving, as 
 it does, not only lightness and dexterity of hand, but 
 sharp eyes and endless patience. 
 
 ' ' Now, let me apply the lessons I have learned from 
 my handicraft to yours. If any of you were obliged to 
 take an apprentice, I suppose you would like to get a 
 good healthy lad, ready and willing to learn, handy, and 
 
8 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 with his fingers not all thumbs, as the saying goes. You 
 would like that he should read, write, and cipher well; 
 and if you were an intelligent master, and your trade in- 
 volved the application of scientific principles, as so many 
 trades do, you would like him to know enough of the 
 elementary principles of science to understand what was 
 going on. I suppose that in nine trades out of ten, it 
 would be useful if he could draw ; and many of you must 
 have lamented your inability to find out for yourself what 
 foreigners are doing or have done. So that some knowl- 
 edge of French and German might, in many cases, be very 
 desirable." * 
 
 In these passages, how are the words and phrases 
 adapted to convey the lecturer's ideas to his audience } 
 
 5. If Huxley had been addressing an audience of col- 
 lege seniors, what difference would it have made in his 
 procedure ? 
 
 6. Read in Shakespeare's Julius CcBsar the speeches 
 made by Brutus and Antony to the Roman mob (Act 
 III, Scene 2). Brutus' purpose is to justify the murder 
 of Caesar, that is, to make the populace look at it as he 
 does. How does he go to work to put the people in 
 possession of his ideas ? He seems to be successful. Is he 
 really so ? What is the difference between his method and 
 Huxley's ? Antony's purpose is to convey to the people 
 certain ideas about the murder quite contrary to those of 
 Brutus. What means does he use ? Why do the ideas 
 conveyed by him to the people so easily efface those con- 
 veyed by Brutus ? Were Brutus' ideas really conveyed ? 
 
 * Huxley, Science and Culture, and Other Essays. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 
 
 When we describe anything to some one else, our prime 
 object is, as has been said, to make him perceive a thing 
 as we perceive it. If it be something seen, we try to make 
 our words do the duty of his eyes; if something heard, 
 we must find ways to make him feel that he, too, has 
 heard what we have. This object is clear enough, but 
 how may it be attained ? Horace's rule " If you wish to 
 make me weep, you must weep yourself, ' ' was nearly 
 right, but not quite. He should have said, ' ' If you wish 
 to make me weep, you must know what ideas were the 
 ones that made you weep, and you must convey those 
 ideas to me." That is, if we wish to make another 
 person see or hear as we have seen or heard, we must 
 know what' our own experience has been, and try to re- 
 produce its stages in their order. 
 
 It may be said, ' ' When we see a thing our experience 
 has no ' stages ' and no ' order. ' We see it all at once and 
 that is the end. ' ' It was in this conviction that Lessing 
 maintained the insurmountable diflBcuIty inherent in 
 descriptive writing to be that it required us to describe in 
 sequence what had taken place simultaneously. It was 
 for this reason that he regarded Homer's method in 
 describing the shield of Achilles as the right one; because 
 
 9 
 
lo A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 instead of taking the shield ready-made, he took it in 
 process of making, and thus turned description into narra- 
 tion. To a certain extent Lessing's view was right, 
 inasmuch as words are slow things compared with the 
 senses, and language is slow in reproducing what the 
 senses have been quick in perceiving. But though there 
 is this disparity in speed, it ought to be recognized for 
 what it is — a difference in degree, not in kind. For our 
 sense-perceptions only appear instantaneous, they are not 
 really so ,but, as we shall see, follow a discoverable order 
 and sequence ; and it is this order and sequence which we 
 must observe, that we may reproduce it in the mind of 
 our listener. For if we have answered the question, 
 ' ' How did we see the thing .? " we have gone a long way 
 toward answering the second question, " How can we 
 make some one else see the thing .? ' ' 
 
 First, then, how do we see .? The initial difficulty in 
 answering this question is, that in general our seeing of ' 
 things has through habit become so rapid a process that 
 it does seem instantaneous, and when we try to discover 
 stages we find it almost impossible. It may, therefore, 
 be of service to begin with cases where from the nature of 
 the circumstances these processes are retarded and their 
 consummation delayed. This is exactly what happens 
 when the object seen is distant and our approach gradual, 
 and here it is easy to recognize distinct stages in percep- 
 tion. Take for example Mr. Hearn's account of his 
 approach to Nevis : 
 
 " Southward, above and beyond the deep green chain, 
 tower other volcanic forms, — very far away, and so pale- 
 gray as to seem like clouds. Those are the heights of 
 Nevis, — another creation of the subterranean fires. 
 
 " It draws nearer, floats steadily into definition: a great 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. ii 
 
 mountain flanked by two small ones; three summits; the 
 loftiest, with clouds packed high upon it, still seems to 
 smoke; the second highest displays the most symmetri- 
 cal crater-form I have yet seen. All are still grayish-blue 
 or gray. Gradually through the blues break long high 
 gleams of green. 
 
 " As we steam closer, the island becomes all verdant 
 from flood to sky; the great dead crater shows its immense 
 wreath of perennial green. On the lower slopes little 
 settlements are sprinkled in white, red, and brown: 
 houses, windmills, sugar-factories, high chimneys are dis- 
 tinguishable; — cane-plantations unfold gold-green sur- 
 faces. 
 
 ' ' We pass away. The island does not seem to sink 
 behind us, but to become a ghost. All its outlines grow 
 shadowy. For a little while it continues green; but it 
 is a hazy, spectral green, as of colored vapor. The sea 
 to-day looks almost black : the southwest wind has filled 
 the day with luminous mist; and the phantom of Nevis 
 melts in the vast glow, dissolves utterly. ' ' * 
 
 The experience here recorded is an instance of what one 
 may call retarded vision, which allows us to trace the 
 order of perception. That order evidently proceeds from 
 the vague to the definite, from the general to the detailed, 
 and the impressiveness of the description lies in the 
 accuracy with which the writer has recognized the charac- 
 ter and value of the different stages in perception. 
 
 With this in mind, let us try a few experiments of 
 another character. To retard our processes is only one 
 way of rendering their investigation possible ; another way 
 is to interrupt them at given points, and note what stage 
 
 * Lafcadio Hearn ; A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics, pp. 
 30-31. 
 
12 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY (VRITING. 
 
 they have reached. But to do this, some way must be 
 found by which an object can be exposed to view for only 
 an instant at a time. This can be done by means of a 
 small screen, easily handled, or a curtain, or, best of all, 
 a stereopticon, by which the exposure and concealment 
 of the image may be made complete and instantaneous.* 
 Adopting one of these devices, suppose we take first a 
 bunch of leaves of various kinds, and expose them to view 
 for an instant. If the exposure has been sufficiently short, 
 it will be found that the spectators have received little 
 more than an impression of something green. On a 
 second exposure, this will have defined itself into a per- 
 ception of form sufficiently clear to involve the recogni- 
 tion of the object as leaves. On a third exposure the 
 impressions will have gained further definiteness, both in 
 perceptions of color, form, and even texture, and the 
 spectators will now perceive that the leaves are of different 
 kinds. A fourth and fifth exposure will furnish material 
 for the discrimination between the kinds, and perhaps the 
 identification of some, as oak, maple, beech, or rose 
 leaves. 
 
 * In these experiments the mechanical difficulties are greater 
 than might be supposed, and the exposures, to be of any 
 value, must be managed with the greatest care. They must 
 be exceedingly short, — the fractional part of a second, — but 
 complete, and the distance of the object from the observers, as 
 well as its illumination, must be so planned that all may get 
 as nearly as possible the same opportunity for perception. 
 Reflected lights, especially, must be guarded against, and it is 
 of course well to avoid using highly glazed photographs, or 
 pictures under glass. When all possible precautions have 
 been taken, considerable practice in manipulation may be nec- 
 essary before good results are obtained. But good results 
 when they are gained are worth the trouble. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 13 
 
 The order of perception may be summed up thus : 
 
 ISf. 
 
 2d. 
 
 S'/. 
 
 
 4tA. 
 
 Green 
 
 Green 
 
 Green leaves 
 
 of 
 
 Green leaves of 
 
 thing. 
 
 leaves. 
 
 different kin 
 light, dark, 
 lobed, etc. 
 
 ds: 
 
 different kinds: 
 Oak : dark, glos- 
 sy, lobed. 
 Maple: lighter, 
 
 star-shaped. 
 Rose : divided 
 into leaflets, etc. 
 
 It will be seen that here, as in the case of gradual 
 approach, there is a clear progression from the vague to 
 the definite, from the general to the detailed. It will, 
 moreover, be apparent that each stage of perception con- 
 tains all that went before, but what is at the first implicit 
 is at the last explicit. 
 
 Take another subject: say, a cluster of red poppies in 
 a tall green vase. Expose this similarly and note the 
 results after each exposure. They will probably be some- 
 what as follows: 
 
 1. Red and green things massed somewhat apart. 
 
 2. Red, tall flowers in tall green vase, the flowers pos- 
 sibly recognized as poppies. 
 
 3. Red flowers with black centers, nodding on slender 
 stems, possibly satin-like texture of petals. 
 
 4. Details: shape of vase; furry stems; variations in 
 the reds of the flowers and the greens of the stems, the 
 leaves, and the vase; individual flowers and budsT 
 
 Here again, there is the same progression as before, and 
 if experiments are multiplied the results will be found to 
 agree in essentials with those just recounted. It is, of 
 course, always well to choose objects as unfamiliar as 
 possible, since with well-known objects the process of 
 perception has through long habit become so swift that 
 
14 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 even very short exposures are not always wholly success- 
 ful in arresting its stages. The later stages, especially, are 
 apt to be obscured, because as soon as the observer has 
 been able to recognize the character of the thing he is 
 looking at, his memory comes to the aid of his vision, 
 and supplies at once many details which he has not yet 
 really perceived in this special case. Thus, in seeing the 
 poppies, if he is familiar with the flower, he no sooner 
 says to himself ' ' poppies ' ' than his memory immediately 
 supplements his direct vision, and even if the experiment 
 were interrupted after the second exposure, he might go 
 on mentally to supply the material noted in the third and 
 fourth exposures; he might from previous observations 
 remember the black centers of the flowers, the harsh 
 furriness of their stems, the papery texture of the petals, 
 etc. ; he might even add from memory the slightly pungent 
 odor which no amount of visual examination could have 
 given him. His perceptions might be graphically repre- 
 sented thus: 
 
 Stage I. 
 
 Stage 2. 
 
 Stage 3; Recognition. 
 
 "ed and 
 
 Tall red flowers. 
 
 " Poppies 1 " 
 
 green 
 
 Tall green vase. 
 
 Memory supplement: pa- 
 
 masses. 
 
 
 pery, satin texture, furry 
 stems, black flower-cen- 
 ters, etc., etc. 
 
 If an unfamiliar object is taken, or even a strange ex- 
 ample of a familiar class, this recognition will be delayed, 
 and the value of the immediate perceptions will be more 
 clearly evinced. 
 
 Allowing, however, for the supplementary influence of 
 memory on the direct perceptions, two things will yet be 
 cleat enough. First, that perception is not the instan- 
 taneous affair it at first seemed to be, but occupies time, 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 15 
 
 though brief time; second, that the stages through which 
 perception passes on its way to completeness are in their 
 essential features the same with all normal observers.* 
 
 When, after repeated experiments, the observer has 
 grown somewhat accustomed to noticing his own proc- 
 esses, it will be possible to test them with greater freedom. 
 Let him, for example, experiment with an unfamiliar 
 room. First open the door and merely glance in. If it 
 be summer and there are white curtains at the windows, 
 the opening door will make a draft, and his first impres- 
 sion may be one of light broken by shadow, which will 
 quickly develop into a perception of streaming white 
 draperies, light or dark walls, and bright sunshine on the 
 floor, partly broken by dark furniture, which is vaguely felt 
 as filling the foreground. Let him take a second look, and 
 note how these first impressions resolve themselves into 
 details : the pictures and the walls find a place in his con- 
 sciousness, the pieces of furniture define themselves and 
 assume some individual character, the sunshine and 
 shadow on floor and walls become more distinct. 
 Finally, let him enter the room and survey it at leisure. 
 In two minutes his perceptions will have acquired con- 
 siderable minuteness and he will be able to give, if desired, 
 an accurate account of the contents of the room. 
 
 The same experiment may be tried with outdoor scenes 
 — vistas inclosed by trees; broad, sweeping views; the 
 shifting aspects of sky and water; and so on. It will be 
 
 * Allowance for abnormality must, of course, always be 
 made. For example, on the first exposure of a square of blue 
 plush whereon a shield crossed by a dragon was embroidered 
 in reds, greens, and tawny yellows, one observer got only a 
 sense of outlines, "a square, an irregular figure within," — no 
 sense of color, except perhaps of the dark background. 
 
1 6 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 found that one's perceptions go forward very much after 
 the manner of an artist's sketch : first the big outhnes and 
 general color-scheme are established, then subordinate 
 relations of form and color, and finally the details. 
 
 Thus we have succeeded in finding out, in a general 
 way, how we see. The next step is that of finding out 
 how to make others see. 
 
 Evidently, the only effective way of accomplishing this, 
 which is the end of description, is by instituting in the 
 minds of our hearers the same processes through which 
 we have ourselves passed. Our general order of procedure 
 is therefore established for us by what we have found out 
 as to the order of our own experience. If, having seen a 
 bunch of poppies ourselves, we wish to make another 
 person see them, we shall not begin by mentioning the 
 furry stems or the black centers, but by emphasizing the 
 color masses, the slenderness and height, leaving details 
 to be mentioned later. 
 
 As an example of the result produced when this order 
 is not observed, take the following description of a rose, 
 which was written by a girl of eighteen : 
 
 "This flower has a long, thorny stem, with leaves 
 having a saw -like edge. These leaves are broad where 
 they start from the stem, and then taper off to a point. 
 
 ' ' At the end of the stem where the flower begins, there 
 is a little g^een cup, with green petals, which are bent 
 back over the cup as the flower opens. 
 
 "The bud of the flower is spiral shaped, with soft, 
 delicate petals seeming to curve and fold over each other. 
 As the flower opens, the outer petals loosen and flare out 
 a,nd then gracefully droop at the edge. After these have 
 separated themselves from the rest of the flower, the other 
 petals loosen and curve in the same way, and finally all 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. i? 
 
 the petals are separated and the flower is entirely open. 
 This flower comes in four distinct colors: white, red, pink, 
 and yellow. It is one of the most fragrant and beautiful 
 flowers which grow." 
 
 What is wrong .? Everything that is said is true of 
 roses. The trouble is, however, that nothing that is said 
 was true of the writer's perception of the rose she tried to 
 describe. She did not really see it in this way, beginning 
 with the thorny stem and the saw-edge of the leaves, and 
 slowly feeling her way along to the flower. What she saw 
 was certainly not first the stem and then the rose, but — 
 first, last, and all the time — the rose, with its leafy stem, 
 as a single whole; but she honestly thought that the way 
 to make some one else see this was by mentioning as many 
 facts as she could think of. Being methodical, as well as 
 conscientious, she followed, in setting down these facts, 
 the order of the flower's growth. If she had followed the 
 order of growth of her own perception, she would have 
 produced a better result. 
 
 So far, we have given most attention to the communi- 
 cating of our first impressions; we have not considered 
 how we shall deal with these when they have developed 
 details. Often, indeed, our descriptions may never get 
 to details at all, but may stop after they have followed 
 through the earlier stages of perception. It may, indeed, 
 be a waste of effort to go on, for the mind when once set 
 going on the right track may develop its complete percep- 
 tion more quickly through its own "memory-supple- 
 ment ' ' than it could by getting more details from us, and 
 the so-called ' ' suggestive ' ' description is effective because 
 of the use it makes of this memory-supplement. It may, 
 for example, produce in our minds the entire picture of a 
 June garden, by simply suggesting the fragrance of June 
 
l8 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 roses, because, as we recall our last perception of that 
 fragrance, it brings in its train all the other perceptions — 
 of color, odor, sound, etc. — associated with it. To 
 make a successful appeal of this kind, it is of course 
 necessary to know one's audience so as to know how 
 much of such activity one can count on. The effective- 
 ness of a description that stops short of details may be 
 compared with that of a water-color sketch which gives 
 only the most important color masses. Take, for exam- 
 ple, the following description of the cardinal-flower: 
 
 " But when vivid color is wanted, what can surpass or 
 equal our cardinal-flower .? There is a glow about this 
 flower as if color emanated from it as from a live coal. 
 The eye is baffled and does not seem to reach the surface 
 of the petal ; it does not see the texture or material part 
 as it does in othar flowers, but rests in a steady, still 
 radiance. It is not so much something colored as it is 
 color itself. And then the moist, cool, shady places it 
 affects, usually where it has no floral rivals, and where the 
 large, dark shadows need just such a dab of fire. Often, 
 too, we see it double, its reflected image in some dark 
 pool heightening its effect." * 
 
 Here the author has not gone beyond the single quality 
 of color, and, pausing upon this one element, con(;ents 
 himself with giving it the greatest possible emphasis. He 
 has paused at the first impression and gone no further. 
 With a subject of a different character, however, or where 
 the purpose is different, greater use may be made of 
 details, as in the following passage: 
 
 " One sometimes seems to discover a familiar wild- 
 flower anew by coming upon it in some peculiar and strik- 
 
 * John Burroughs: Riverty, p. ii. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 19 
 
 ing situation. Our columbine is at all times and in all 
 places one of the most exquisitely beautiful of flowers; 
 yet one spring day, when I saw it growing out of a small 
 seam on the face of a great lichen-covered wall of rock, 
 where no soil or mould was visible, — a jet of foliage and 
 color shooting out of a black line on the face of a perpen- 
 dicular mountain wall and rising up like a tiny fountain, 
 its drops turning to flame-colored jewels that hung and 
 danced in the air against the gray rocky surface, — its 
 beauty became something magical and audacious. " * 
 
 The first half of the passage does not now concern us; 
 it assigns the particular experience to a class of experi- 
 ences, and this particular flower to a class of flowers, f 
 The description of the flower itself begins with the phrase 
 "a jet of foliage and color," which corresponds to the 
 first stage of our perception. ' ' Foliage ' ' suggests green ; 
 ' color," assisted by the word " jet," suggests flame, or 
 perhaps merely brilliance. ' ' Tiny fountain ' ' adds a 
 general notion of form, while considerable detail as to the 
 flowers themselves is suggested in the clause which fol- 
 lows. 
 
 It will be noted that in this description the elements of 
 the sense-experience are suggested, rather than stated. 
 " Fountain " suggests the form of the plant as a whole, 
 "drops" that of the flowers, "flame" and "jewels" 
 suggest the pure, brilliant red and yellow of the flower. 
 But the principle is the same, whether the means used be 
 of one kind or another; for all language is fymbolic 
 merely, and the object of description is attained if the 
 hearer can be made to go through in imagination the same 
 experiences which we have undergone with our senses. 
 
 * John Burroughs: Riverby, p. 13. 
 t Cf. p. 164. 
 
20 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 For the underlying principle it does not matter whether 
 the sense-impression be conveyed by the words "red," 
 ' ' yellow, " " green, " or by the expressions ' ' glow, " " live 
 coal," "dab of fire," or by the words "flame," 
 " jewel," or by the yet more subtly figurative suggestion 
 of Emily Dickinson's Humming Bird: 
 
 A route of evanescence 
 
 With a revolving wheel ; 
 A resonance of emerald, 
 
 A whir of cochineal. 
 
 In an exhaustive study of descriptive writing as an art 
 by itself it would be necessary to consider such differences 
 as these, but for the present purpose it is enough that we 
 give passing notice to this fact of difference in the means 
 of appeal, while we emphasize the fundamental similarity 
 in the method of appeal, — fundamental, because based on 
 the processes of our actual experience. 
 
 But in the description thus far considered, few details 
 are involved, because the experience which the writer was 
 trying to communicate was one where it was his general 
 impression that interested him and remained in his 
 memory. For Mr. Burroughs as he wrote his description, 
 the cardinal-flower was a glowing red thing in a moist, 
 dark place. Doubtless he had at different times had 
 many other impressions of the flower, some of these in- 
 volving perception of much detail, but at the moment 
 when he wrote that description these other impressions 
 were not with him. Similarly, - his impression of the 
 columbine was a general one, though it had resolved itself 
 somewhat more into its constituent parts than in the case 
 of the cardinal-flower. 
 
 It is not always this sort of experience which we wish 
 to convey to another. Often it is one where the impres- 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 21 
 
 sions have gone on defining themselves, till the details 
 implicit in the first impression have become explicit. The 
 question at once arises, How shall we go to work, if we 
 want to convey to some one else the whole of such a fully 
 developed impression ? The difficulties are, indeed, great. 
 It is not easy to make some one else share our first com- 
 prehensive perception of a thing, but it is perhaps even 
 less easy to make him partaker in our final comprehensive 
 perception, with its clear definition of parts, its fullness of 
 detail. Here, as always, the only possible salvation is an 
 appeal to our own experience, to discover how we our- 
 selves perceived details. 
 
 In the earlier experiment we saw that, as we looked at 
 the object, our perception gradually made explicit what 
 was at first implicit ; that it did not add new bits of per- 
 ception, new fragments of detail, as one might add fresh 
 patches to complete a quilt, but that our first perception 
 grew into our last by a process of defining what was 
 always inherent in it. The secondary and tertiary impres- 
 sions were not superimposed upon the first, or added 
 alongside it, they grew out of it. 
 
 In conveying our experience to another person we shall, 
 therefore, naturally try to follow the order of our own 
 experience. We shall first transfer to him our own 
 general impression, which will contain in itself the main 
 values; then we shall try to follow with him the develop- 
 ment of our perception as these main values gain in defini- 
 tion. No amount of detail will confuse him if he has 
 been already prepared for it, as we ourselves were, — if he 
 has the germ out of which it naturally grows. 
 
 The difference between the right and the wrong way of 
 going to work may be illustrated by a case from common 
 experience. Having never seen the moon save with the 
 
22 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY MERITING. 
 
 naked eye, we are taken to a powerful telescope and told 
 to look. As we place our eye at the eyepiece, our vision 
 is dazed and blinded by a confusion of lights and shadows, 
 there seem to be meaningless masses, meaningless crags 
 and chasms and peaks, and we withdraw in bewilderment, 
 and look out with a feeling of relief at the little pale disk 
 with its large familiar outlines of " eyes, nose, and 
 mouth," of the " man and the dog," or of the " lady." 
 There seems no connection between that comfortably in- 
 telligible moon and the chaos of lights we have just seen. 
 But let us turn an ordinary field-glass upon its surface: 
 the " man " has disappeared, but we still see the confor- 
 mations that made us think of him, and after a moment's 
 adjustment to the new view we are ready to look through 
 the "finder" of the telescope and adapt ourselves to a 
 yet bigger scale of vision. Here we see nearly the whole 
 disk, much more magnified than in the field lens, but 
 bearing about the same relation to the image which that 
 had given us as that image bore to the one furnished by 
 the lens of our eye. Again we establish general relations, 
 identify this and that crater or peak or crack, and now we 
 are ready to return to the huge lens and to look with 
 delighted appreciation at the details of crag and chasm 
 which had at first baffled our understanding. 
 
 Elaborate description should in its general procedure 
 follow the processes of experience just suggested; it ought 
 to use the naked eye before it resorts to the " finder," and 
 it ought to use both before it employs the high-power lens. 
 But too often it leaves out all intermediate processes and 
 the unfortunate observer finds himself before the eyepiece 
 of the telescope where he must, in weariness and bewilder, 
 ment, make out for himself the general values and rela- 
 tions which should first have been supplied him. He can 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 23 
 
 sometimes do it, but it is not wise nor economical ot 
 energy to demand that he shall. 
 
 In detailed description, then, nothing ought to be pre- 
 sented to the listener for which provision has not been 
 made, which has not been really implied or suggested in 
 his first general view of the whole. The process should 
 be one not of accretion, but of development. 
 
 In the following description of St. Mark's, note the use 
 of details. The object described is probably one of the 
 most complex in existence; it is a creation of art so vast, 
 so wonderful, that one might study it for years and not 
 exhaust its resources. This, therefore, must be conveyed 
 in the description, yet it must be done in such a way that 
 the hearer shall perceive complexity in the thing without 
 being himself confused. Note how this is accomplished: 
 Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes 
 the place of his rest, let us enter the church itself. It is 
 lost in still deeper twilight, to which the eye must be 
 accustomed for some moments before the form of the 
 building can be traced; and then there opens before us a 
 vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided 
 into shadowy aisle< by many pillars. Round the domes 
 of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures 
 like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from 
 some far-away casement wanders into the darkness, and 
 casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of 
 marble ihat heave and fall in a thousand colors along the 
 floor. What else there is of light is from torches, or 
 silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the 
 chapels; the roo! sheeted with gold, and the polished walls 
 covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle 
 some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the glories round 
 the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we 
 
24 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot 
 and over head a continual succession of crowded imagery, 
 one picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms 
 beautiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and ser- 
 pents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that 
 in the midst of them drink from running fountains and 
 feed from vases of crystal : the passions and the pleasures 
 of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its 
 redemption ; for the mazes of interwoven lines and change- 
 ful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and 
 carved in every place and upon every stone; sometimes 
 with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes 
 with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing 
 forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the 
 great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised 
 in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. And 
 although in the recesses of the aisle and chapels, when the 
 mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually 
 a figure traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman 
 standing with her eyes raised to heaven, and the inscrip- 
 tion above her, ' Mother of God, ' she is not here the pre- 
 siding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and always, 
 burning in the center of the temple; and every dome and 
 hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost 
 height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment." * 
 Here is the suggestion of enormous amount of detail, 
 purposely expressed with something of disorder, corre- 
 sponding to the manner of one's actual set of impressions 
 when entering the cathedral. If this were the only thing 
 done, if the passage beginning "Under foot and over 
 head " had nothing before it, the result would be, not a 
 
 * Ruskin: TAt Stones of Venice, Vol. II, Chap. IV. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 25 
 
 perception of almost bewildering complexity, but a 
 bewildered apprehension of complexity, with no clew sug- 
 gested. But Ruskin has avoided this by his introductory 
 sentences. These present to us, first only dim twilight, 
 then vast space, then the shape of this vastness, ' ' hewn 
 out into the form of a cross, ' ' with a suggestion of pillars 
 and aisles. Then follows the gi-adual defining of the first 
 impression. "Twilight" was one of its elements, and 
 this is now developed and defined into the ' ' phosphoric 
 stream ' ' of faint light from without, the yet feebler light 
 of torches and lamps, the reflected light from walls and 
 roof. Then follow the details of these walls and ceiling 
 and pavement which gradually fill in the spaces already 
 outlined in our imagination and only waiting for fuller 
 development. 
 
 Evidently by this method any amount of detail can be 
 assimilated, because nothing is presented that has not 
 some germ of suggestion out of which it grows. And if 
 the result can be attained when dealing with this subject, 
 it can be attained with any subject. 
 
 Description, then, is successful just so far as it follows 
 the actual order of the sensuous experience it describes. 
 In written description the process of perception will, 
 moreover, be reflected in the structure; its paragraphs 
 will possess the qualities of "unity," "coherence," 
 ' ' proportion. ' ' For paragraphs are not arbitrary group- 
 ings, made to break the page and assist the eye, they are 
 the outer expression of thought -groups as they exist in the 
 mind. And just as in determining the order of expression 
 we found it necessary to appeal to the order of our own 
 experience and reproduce that, so in determining the 
 grouping of sentences which shall on the written page 
 constitute a paragraph, we are in little danger of going 
 
2 6 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 wrong if we honestly follow tfie order of our own 
 thoughts. For, as we have seen, we perceive things as 
 wholes; our first impression contains in the germ all that 
 IS in our last most detailed impression. If our expression 
 conveys this, it will constitute a paragraph, which will 
 be a whole as the experience it relates is a whole. It may 
 be a single sentence giving merely the first general im- 
 pression or little more than this; as in Mr. Burroughs' 
 columbine; or it may be many sentences, and be as com- 
 plex as was the experience, as In Ruskin's description of 
 St. Marks. But so Jong as it honestly follows the real 
 experience it will be right. It will possess unity because 
 the experience it embodies possessed it, it will possess 
 coherence or continuity, because the stages ol perception 
 themselves cohere, being continupusly developed each out 
 of the preceding; it will possess proportion because no 
 detail will have a place which did not also have its part 
 implicit in the first impression, and the place and value 
 of each detail is determined not arbitrarily, but by the 
 fact of its real place and value in the perceptive stages. 
 
 We may illustrate this by the analogy of a tree, with its 
 main trunk, its limbs, branches, and twigs. The tree is 
 complex, but it is a coherent, proportioned whole; the 
 size of the trunk determines the size of the limbs into 
 which it divides, the -branches and twigs have their num- 
 ber, size, and position determined by the size and position 
 of the limbs from which they -spring. In a description, 
 the first general impression corresponds to the main trunk, 
 the first set of details growing out of this impression corre- 
 sponds to the large limbs, the later sets of details growing 
 out of the earlier ones correspond to the branches and 
 twigs. The relative elaboration of various groups of 
 details will depend upon the relative importance of the 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 27 
 
 impression out of which they grow, as the elaboration — if 
 we may transfer the word^ — of the branch into branchlets 
 and twigs is conditioned by the size of the branch. Thus 
 in describing the columbine, it would indeed have been a 
 violation of the "law of proportion" to dilate on the 
 number of stamens or the form of the pistil, because it 
 would have been a violation of truth, and Mr. Burroughs, 
 who was honestly following his own experience, could not 
 possibly have thought of mentioning these things because 
 a perception of them really had no part in that experience. 
 The ' ' main trunk ' ' in this case was the impression of 
 "magical and audacious beauty," the "larger limbs" 
 were the impressions regarding the manner of growth of 
 the plant, with its contrasting background, the color of 
 the flowers, and the way they hung and danced, etc. * 
 
 The question. When shall a paragraph end and another 
 begin .? is to be met by the same appeal to experience. 
 The paragraph ends when the perception, whatever its 
 scope, is complete. A new one begins whenever the per- 
 ception dealt with is thought of as in some way new and 
 different. This may be illustrated by going back to the 
 description by Mr. Hearn quoted on pages lo-ii and 
 comparing with it this other similar description : 
 
 " Then a high white shape like a cloud appears before 
 us, on the purplish-dark edge of the sea. The cloud- 
 shape enlarges, heightens without changing contour. It 
 is not a cloud, but an island! Its outlines begin to 
 sharpen, with faintest pencilings of color. Shadowy 
 valleys appear, spectral hollows, phantom slopes of pallid 
 blue or green. The apparition is so like a mirage that it 
 is difficult to persuade oneself one is looking at real land, 
 
 * For further illustration, cf. the diagrams on pp. 66, 67. 
 
2 8 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 — that it is not a dream. It seems to have shaped itself 
 all suddenly out of the glowing haze. We pass many 
 miles beyond it; and it vanishes into mist again." * 
 
 The material here is virtually the same, yet in the first 
 case it was given in four paragraphs, here there is only 
 one. Why .? Because though the experiences recorded 
 are similar, they are not really quite alike. In each case 
 the later perceptions grow out of the earlier, but in the 
 first the growth is not quite continuous, there are pauses; 
 it is as if one looked, then closed one's eyes, or slackened 
 one's attention, then looked again and paused again, and 
 so on. But in the passage last quoted, there are no 
 pauses, there is no consciousness, as in the other, that we, 
 the spectators, have shifted our position, have come 
 nearer and yet nearer. It is rather the " mirage" itself 
 that has developed before our eyes and lost itself again. 
 Thus the smoothness of the perception's growth is made 
 a part of the dream-like effect which is so much more im- 
 portant an element here than in the other case. 
 
 Because the first passage happens to have more details 
 than the second, one might infer that details necessitate 
 numerous paragraphs. That this is not the case will be 
 evident if we look again at the Ruskin description. Here, 
 as in Mr. Hearn's description, we have a single paragraph, 
 but a paragraph which in richness of content differs from 
 the simplicity of the other as the oppressive complexity of 
 twilight effects in the cathedral itself differs from the clear, 
 if elusive, color-scheme of that ocean vision. Why one 
 paragraph, then .? Because, though with different ma- 
 terial, the perceptions have worked in the same way. 
 There is no break, no slackening of the attention and 
 
 * Lafcadio Hearn : A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics, pp. 
 31-2. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 29 
 
 beginning again; it is one long look, which brings to the 
 sensitive mind behind gradually richer results, but always 
 simply enriches that first whole impression of gorgeous 
 twilight complexity. If the attention had slackened and 
 taken a new grip with a new center of perception — some 
 wholly new detail or a consciously new point of view — the 
 experience would have been different, and so would have 
 been, or ought to have been, the paragraphing. 
 
 Paragraphs, then, are neither measured by arbitrary rule, 
 nor determined by the writer's consciousness that his 
 reader expects a rest, nor do they fall out by accident; 
 they are merely the outward and visible sign of an inward 
 and invisible experience, and just as the order of expres- 
 sion will depend upon the order of experience, so the 
 manner of grouping the written symbols of expression will 
 depend upon the manner of grouping in the perceptions 
 experienced. And similarly, the qualities of unity, con- 
 tinuity, and proportion will be found to inhere naturally 
 in the expression, so far as that expression honestly com- 
 municates the experience with which it deals. 
 
 LESSON II. 
 
 1. Watch an approaching vehicle — a carriage, a horse- 
 man, a wheelman — and notice your impressions. Write 
 an account of these, following as nearly as possible their 
 actual order. 
 
 2. Watch, from a point close to the track, an approach- 
 ing or receding train ; or watch an approaching or reced- 
 ing sail-boat or steamship; write your impressions. 
 
 3. Describe the way in which a black spot on the 
 horizon resolves itself into detail as you approach. 
 
 4. Using such appliances as are at command, perform 
 
3° / COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 a number of experiments like those with the bunch of 
 leaves and the poppies.* 
 
 After each exposure, write down your impression. 
 This should be done before there is any discussion, to 
 avoid blurring the memory of just what the impression 
 was. 
 
 After several exposures, compare the later impressions 
 with the earlier, and trace how one grows out of the other. 
 
 Try these experiments with (i) a piece of variegated 
 cloth; (2) a bunch of leaves, or flowers, of different kinds; 
 (3) a picture, preferably a colored one, and having con- 
 siderable detail. 
 
 5. Having noted the process, write a description of 
 each object, on the basis of this process. 
 
 LESSON III. 
 
 1. Go and look at an unfamiliar building, and report, 
 in connected form, the impression it makes upon you. 
 
 (i) A school or college building which you wish to 
 describe to a friend expecting to enter as a 
 student. 
 
 (2) A dwelling-house, which a family who think of 
 moving have asked you to look at. 
 
 2. Enter an unfamiliar room and note the stages of 
 your impression. 
 
 * Compare pages 11-14. In showing objects for the class to 
 look at, it is of course well to use such as are unfamiliar — 
 the more unfamiliar, the better. For the recognition of the 
 object by the student should come slowly, since as soon as this 
 has taken place he will hardly be able to tell which traits he 
 is noticing afresh and which he is merely adding from memory. 
 Curious flowers or shrubs, complex tapestries, grotesque fig- 
 ures, painted or photographed or carved, are good to use 
 Photographs of the Notre Dame gargoyles have been found 
 suitable, though not for the very first experiments. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 31 
 
 To avoid confusion it will be well to impose limits or 
 checks on the sight, as by looking in through a door, 
 which can be opened and shut. 
 
 3. Enter a room or hall containing white casts or 
 marbles, and write out your first impressions. 
 
 4. Describe your first impression of a view from a high 
 window or a tower. 
 
 5. Discuss the value of the following descriptions; how 
 do the figurative or semi-figurative words strengthen the 
 sense-impression ? 
 
 (i) [The sea], 
 
 An everywhere of silver.* 
 
 (2) 
 (3) 
 
 I babbled for you as babies for the moon. 
 Vague brightness. \ 
 
 It sounded as if the streets were running. 
 
 And then the streets stood still. 
 Eclipse was all we could see at the window, 
 
 And awe was all we could feel. % 
 
 6. Explain the " unity " of this paragraph: 
 " Behind us the mountains still float back. Their 
 shining green has changed to a less vivid hue; they are 
 taking bluish tones here and there; but their outlines are 
 still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are white 
 speckhngs, which are villages and towns. These white 
 specks diminish swiftly, —dwindle to the dimensions of 
 salt-grains, — finally vanish. Then the island grows uni- 
 formly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of 
 
 * Emily Dickinson: The Sea. 
 \ Tennyson: The Princess. 
 X Emily Dickinson: Storm. 
 
32 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 mountains; it turns at last gray as smoke, and then 
 melts into the horizon-light like a mirage." * 
 
 7. Account for the paragraphing in the following 
 passage : 
 
 "A great gray mountain shape looms up before us. 
 We are steaming on Santa Cruz. 
 
 "The island has a true volcanic outline, sharp and 
 high : the cliffs sheer down almost perpendicularly. The 
 shape is still vapory, varying in coloring from purplish to 
 bright gray; but wherever peaks and spurs fully catch the 
 sun they edge themselves with a beautiful green glow, 
 while interlying ravines seem filled with foggy blue. 
 
 "As we approach, sunlighted surfaces come out still 
 more luminously green. Glens and sheltered valleys still 
 hold blues and grays; but points fairly illuminated by the 
 solar glow show just such a fiery green as burns in the 
 plumage of certain humming-birds. And just as the 
 lustrous colors of these birds shift according to changes 
 of light, so the island shifts colors here and there, — from 
 emerald to blue, and blue to gray. . . . But now we are 
 near: it shows us a lovely heaping of high bright hills in 
 front, with a further coast-line very low and long and 
 verdant, fringed with a white beach, and tufted with 
 spidery palm-crests. Immediately opposite, other palms 
 are poised; their trunks look like pillars of unpolished 
 silver, their leaves shimmer like bronze." f 
 
 At the first I saw naught but the blackness ; but soon I de- 
 scried 
 
 A something more black than the blackness — the vast, the 
 upright 
 
 * Lafcadio Hearn : A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics, p. 28. 
 t lb. pp. 22-3. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 33 
 
 Main prop which sustains the pavilion; and slow into sight 
 Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all : 
 Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent roof, — showed Saul. 
 He stood as erect as that tent-prop ; both arms stretched out 
 
 wide 
 On the great cross-support in the center, that goes to each side; 
 He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there, — as, caught in his 
 
 pangs 
 And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs, 
 Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come 
 With the spring-time, — so agonized Saul, drear and stark, 
 
 blind and dumb.* 
 
 Note that two separate scenes are here described : first 
 the darkened tent, second the tent lighted by the sunbeam ; 
 and each of these scenes produces its own set of impres- 
 sions. 
 
 LESSON IV. 
 
 1. Give your impression of a girl as she dashes by on a 
 wheel. 
 
 You are writing, perhaps, to a friend of hers and yours, 
 who has asked you to ' ' look her up, ' ' and this is your 
 first glimpse of her. 
 
 2. (i) Describe the glimpses you get, from the window 
 
 of a moving train, of a lake, a river, a wood- 
 path, a burning building, a street of a village, 
 etc. 
 
 (2) In any of these cases, what different value will 
 
 your glimpse have for you if the place be 
 familiar, — if the lake is one you have spent a 
 summer on, or the path one you have explored ? 
 
 (3) What difference would it make in your method if 
 
 you were describing such a familiar place to a 
 
 companion who had been there with you .? f 
 
 * Browning ; Saul. 
 
 t Cf. the cases of the two sportsmen, p. 5. 
 
34 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 3. Give your impression of a face seen in the window 
 of a passing train, or in a closed carriage. 
 
 4. Describe the impression you get when you catch a 
 glimpse of an animal just as it is whisking out of sight, 
 ■i.e., a squirrel, a rat, a bird. 
 
 5. Describe your first impression of a shop window full 
 of spring hats. 
 
 6. Describe the sound of a garden-hose in the early 
 morning, the distant sound of running water, the sound 
 of distant surf. 
 
 7. Describe the sound of an approaching trolley-car, 
 giving the stages your impression passes through. 
 
 8. How far has the process of perception gone in the 
 following descriptions .? * 
 
 (i) "The stone had hardly struck the brush when 
 what looked like a tongue of vermilion fiame 
 leaped forth near by, and darting across, 
 stuck itself out of sight in the green vines on 
 the opposite slope." f 
 
 (2) " When you have seen a fox loping along in that 
 way you have seen the poetry there is in the 
 canine tribe. It is to the eye what a flow- 
 ing measure is to the mind, so easy, so 
 buoyant; the furry creature drifting along 
 like a large red thistledown, or like a plume 
 borne by the wind. ' ' J 
 
 * These citations, and all others, will of course be available 
 for class discussion and independent work by the student, on 
 various points not specially mentioned : — questions of plan, 
 etc., of paragraphs, and later on of sentence structure and use 
 of words. 
 
 f James Lane Allen : A Kentucky Cardinal, Chap. VIII. 
 % John Burroughs : Riverby, p. 178. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 35 
 
 What is the exact value of the following comparisons ? 
 
 (3) Odysseus, addressing Nausicaa: "Never have 
 
 mine uyes beheld such an one among mortals. 
 . . . Yet in Delos once I saw as goodly a thing : 
 a young sapling of a palm tree springing by 
 the altar of Apollo." * 
 
 (4) " Mrs. Crisparkle's sister, another piece of 
 
 Dresden china, and matching her so neatly 
 that they would have made a delightful pair 
 of ornaments for the two ends of any capa- 
 cious old-fashioned chimney-piece and by 
 right should never have been seen apart." "j" 
 Analyze the full suggestiveness of the figure. 
 (5) 
 
 For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 
 Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place 
 All round to mountains — with such name to grace 
 Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. 
 
 those two hills on the right 
 
 Crouched like two bulls locked horn and horn in fight ; 
 While to the left a tall scalped mountain 
 
 What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? 
 
 The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart.}: 
 
 Note that the " Tower itself" is not a detail growing 
 o'lt of the original picture; it was not there at all at first, 
 but appears as by enchantment; when it does appear the 
 description begins afresh, with a fresh perception. 
 
 * Odyssey, Book VI. 
 
 t Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Chap. VI. 
 
 % Browning: Childe Roland. 
 
36 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 (6) " In a bright dress he rambled among the graves 
 in the gay weather and so came, in one 
 corner, upon an open grave for a child — a 
 dark space on the brilliant grass — the black 
 mould lying heaped up around it, weighing 
 down the little jeweled branches of the dwarf 
 rose-bushes in flower." * 
 
 LESSON V. 
 
 1. Go back to the descriptions written in Lesson III, 
 1-4, and develop the first impressions there recorded into 
 somewhat greater detail, — about as much as one would 
 get from a second look at the object, after the first hasty 
 glimpse. 
 
 Do not try to predict what this second look ought to 
 give you, but try the experiment and see what it does give 
 you. 
 
 2. Show how this could be done with a description of 
 the Kentucky cardinal or of the fox (Lesson IV, 8). 
 
 3. In two or three of these cases, trace out carefully 
 the relation between the general impression and the devel- 
 oped details. 
 
 4. "A corn-field in July is a hot place. The soil is hot 
 and dry; the wind comes across the lazily murmuring 
 leaves laden with a warm sickening smell drawn from the 
 rapidly-growing, broad-flung banners of the corn. The 
 sun, nearly vertical, drops a flood of dazzling light and 
 heat upon the field over which the cool shadows run, only 
 to make the heat seem the more intense." j" 
 
 What is the relation between the first sentence and each 
 of the clauses that follow .? What senses are appealed to 
 
 * Pater: The Child in the House. 
 
 f Hamlin Garland: Main Travelled Roads. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 37 
 
 in the description ? To which sense is the predominant ap- 
 peal ? How does the appeal to the others emphasize this ? 
 
 5. " Had positive proof this morning that at least one 
 sparrow has come back to his haunts of a year ago. One 
 year ago to-day my attention was attracted, while walking 
 over to the post-office, by an unfamiliar bird-song. It 
 caught my ear while I was a long way off. I followed it 
 up and found that it proceeded from a song sparrow. Its 
 chief feature was one long, clear, high note, very strong, 
 sweet, and plaintive. It sprang out of the trills and 
 quavers of the first part of the bird-song, like a long arc 
 or parabola of sound. To my mental vision it rose far up 
 against the blue, and turned sharply downward again and 
 finished in more trills and quavers. I had never before 
 heard anything like it. It was the usual long, silvery note 
 in the sparrow's song greatly increased; indeed, the whole 
 breath and force of the bird put in this note, so that you 
 caught little else than this silver loop of sound." * 
 
 What is the general impression here .? How is the 
 appeal to the eye made to strengthen that to the ear ? 
 How would you have to change this description to make 
 it appeal to a child of nine .? 
 
 6. "Immediately below him the hillside fell away, 
 clean and cleared for fifteen hundred feet, where a little 
 village of stone-walled houses, with roofs of beaten earth, 
 clung to the steep tilt. All round it the tiny terraced 
 fields lay out like aprons of patchwork on the knees of the 
 mountain, and cows no bigger than beetles grazed between 
 the smooth stone circles of the threshing-floors. Looking 
 across the valley, the eye was deceived by the size of 
 things, and could not at first realize that what seemed to 
 
 * John Burroughs: Riverby, p. 170. 
 
38 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 be low scrub, on the opposite mountain flank, was in 
 truth a forest of hundred-foot pines. Purun Bhagat saw 
 an eagle swoop across the gigantic hollow, but the great 
 bird dwindled to a dot ere it was half-way over. A few 
 bands of scattered clouds strung up and down the valley, 
 catching on a shoulder of the hills, or rising up and dying 
 out when they were level with the head of the pass. And 
 ' here shall I find peace,' said Purun Bhagat." * 
 
 Note that in this description the total impression, which 
 is nowhere stated, is one of height and distance, of aloof- 
 ness from the world, suggested, perhaps, in the last words. 
 With this as the key to the paragraph, justify the details. 
 What devices are employed to force you to a sense of the 
 distance between Purun Bhagat and the world of people } 
 
 7. " We know not how to characterize, in any accord- 
 ant and compatible terms, the Rome that lies before us ; 
 its sunless alleys, and streets of palaces; its churches, 
 lined with the gorgeous marbles that were originally 
 polished for the adornment of pagan temples; its thou- 
 sands of evil smells, mixed up with fragrance of rich 
 incense diffused from as many censers; its little life, 
 deriving feeble nutriment from what has long been dead. 
 Everywhere, some fragment of ruin suggesting the mag- 
 nificence of a former epoch; everywhere, moreover, a 
 Cross — and nastiness at the foot of it. As the sum of all, 
 there are recollections that kindle the soul, and a gloom 
 and languor that depress it beyond any depth of melan- 
 cholic sentiment that can be elsewhere known." "j" 
 
 What is the general impression .? Has the paragraph 
 " unity " and " proportion " ? Why 1 
 
 * Rudyard Kipling: The Second Jungle Book ; The Miracle of 
 Purun Bhagiit. 
 
 t Hawthorne: The Marble Faun, Vol. I, Chap. XII. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 39 
 
 8. Compare with the above this description of Rome as 
 it appeared to Dorothea : 
 
 "The weight of unintelligible Rome . . Ruins and 
 basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid 
 present, where all that was living and warm-blooded 
 seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition di- 
 vorced from reverence ; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic 
 life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings ; the long 
 vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold 
 the monotonous light of an alien world : all this vast wreck 
 of ambitious ideals, sensuous and si)iritual, mixed con- 
 fu.sedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and deg- 
 radation, at first jarred her as with an electric shock, and 
 then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to 
 a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. ' ' * 
 
 9. " The minister's daughter was not the sort of person 
 he expected. She was quite incongruous with his notion 
 of ministers' daughters in general, and though he had 
 expected something nowise delightful, the incongruity 
 repelled him. A very delicate scent, the faint suggestion 
 of a garden, was wafted as she went. He would not 
 observe her, but he had a sense of an elastic walk, the 
 tread of small feet, a long neck, and a high crown of 
 shining brown plaits, with curls that floated backward — 
 things, in short, that suggested a fine lady to him, and 
 determined him to notice her as little as possible. " f 
 
 Trace the relation between the first sentence and the 
 second ; between the first two and the last in the passage. 
 How do the words suggesting movement help the main 
 purpose } 
 
 10. "Sylvia Crane's house was the one in which her 
 
 * George Eliot : Middle-march , Chap. XX. 
 f George Eliot: Felix Holt, Chap. V. 
 
40 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 grandmother had been born, and was the oldest house in 
 the village. It was known as the ' old Crane place. ' It 
 had never been painted, it was shedding its flapping gray 
 shingles like gray scales, the roof sagged in a mossy hollow 
 before the chimney, the windows and the doors were awry, 
 and the whole house was full of undulations and wavering 
 lines, which gave it a curiously unreal look in broad day- 
 light. In the moonlight it was the shadowy edifice built 
 of a dream. ' ' * 
 
 Does the first sentence present the whole of the impres- 
 sion ? 
 
 II. "The animal he bestrode was a broken-down 
 plow-horse that had outlived almost everything but his 
 viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with an ewe 
 neck and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail 
 were tangled and knotted with burrs; one eye had lost its 
 pupil, and was glaring and spectral ; but the other had the 
 gleam of a genuine devil in it. " "j" 
 
 Compare this with the following description : 
 
 12. 
 
 One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, 
 Stood stupefied, however he came there: 
 Thrust out past service from the devil's stud ! 
 Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, » 
 With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain. 
 And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane ; 
 Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; 
 I never saw a brute I hated so ; 
 He must be wicked to deserve such pain. J 
 
 Which of the two leaves with you the most vivid 
 impression ? Can you find any of the reasons for this 
 difference ? 
 
 * Mary E. Wilkins: Pembroke, Chap. II. 
 
 \ Irving: The Sketch Book ; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 
 
 X Browning: Childe Eoland. ' 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 41 
 
 LESSON VI. 
 
 1. Whal is the effect of the following description ? 
 What is the part in it of the details mentioned ? 
 
 ' ' Ashore, through a black swarming and a great hum 
 of Creole chatter. . . . Warm yellow narrow streets under 
 a burning blue day, a confused impression of long vistas, 
 of low pretty houses and cottages, more or less quaint, 
 bathed in sun and yellow-wash, — and avenues of shade- 
 trees, — and low garden-walls overtopped by waving 
 banana leaves and fronds of palms. ... A general sen- 
 sation of drowsy warmth and vast light and exotic vegeta- 
 tion, — coupled with some vague disappointment at the 
 absence of that picturesque humanity that delighted us in 
 the streets of St. Pierre, Martinique." * 
 
 Note that ' ' a black swarming and a great hum ' ' are 
 not strictly a part of the main description, but phrases 
 suggestive of another picture. How could the impression 
 they suggest develop its own set of details .? 
 
 2. What is the exact content of the general impression 
 in the following ? Trace out the relation between it and 
 the various details. Do the last two sentences violate the 
 unity of the paragraph ? 
 
 ' ' The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is 
 like the cheery expression of comfortable activity in the 
 human countenance. You could see, at once, that there 
 was the stir of a large family within it. A huge load of 
 oak-wood was passing through the gateway, towards the 
 out-buildings in the rear; the fat cook — or probably it 
 might be the housekeeper — stood at the side-door, bar- 
 gaining for some turkeys and poultry which a countryman 
 had brought for sale. Now and then a maid-servant, 
 
 * Lafcadio Hearn: A Midsummer Trip to the Tropics, p. 82. 
 
42 A COURSE /A/ EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 neatly dressed, and now the shining sable face of a slave, 
 might be seen bustling across the windows in the lower 
 part of the house. At an open window of a room in the 
 second story, hanging over some pots of beautiful and 
 delicate flowers — exotics, but which had never known a 
 more genial sunshine than that of the New England 
 autumn — was the figure of a young lady, an exotic, like 
 the flowers, and beautiful and delicate as they. Her 
 presence imparted an indescribable grace and faint 
 witchery to the whole edifice." * 
 
 3. " For she stood at the head of a deep green valley, 
 carved from out the mountains in a perfect oval, with a 
 fence of sheer rock standing around it, eighty feet or a 
 hundred high; from whose brink black wooded hills 
 swept up to the sky-line. By her side a little river glided 
 out from under ground with a soft dark babble, unawares 
 of daylight ; then growing brighter, lapsed away, and fell 
 into the valley. There, as it ran down the meadow, 
 alders stood on either marge, and grass was blading out 
 upon it, and yellow tufts of rushes gathered, looking at 
 the hurry. But farther down, on either bank, were 
 covered houses, built of stone, square and roughly 
 cornered, set as if the brook were meant to be the street 
 between them. Only one room high they were, and not 
 placed opposite each other, but in and out, as skittles are; 
 only that the first of all, which proved to be the captain's, 
 was a sort of double house, or, rather, two houses joined 
 together by a plank-bridge over the river." f 
 
 Is there any sense of confusion in getting the details 
 here ? If so, can you trace this to its cause ? If not, can 
 you tell why ? 
 
 * Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables, Chap. XIII, 
 f Blackraore: Lorna Doone. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 43 
 
 4. Ask yourself the same questions in regard to this 
 passage : 
 
 " There had been a hesitating fall of snow in the morn- 
 ing, but before noon it had turned to a mild and fitful rain 
 that had finally modified itself into a clinging mist as 
 evening drew near. The heavy snow-storm of the last 
 week in January had left the streets high on both sides 
 with banks that thawed swiftly whenever the sun came out 
 again, the water running from them into the broad gutters, 
 and then freezing hard at night, when the cold wind swept 
 across the city. Now, at nightfall, after a muggy day, a 
 sickening slush had spread itself treacherously over all the 
 crossings. The shop-girls going home had to pick their 
 way cautiously from corner to corner under the iron pillars 
 supporting the station of the elevated railroad. Train 
 followed train overhead, each close on the other's heels; 
 and clouds of steam swirled down as the engines came to 
 a full stop with a shrill grinding of the brakes. From the 
 skeleton spans of the elevated road moisture dripped on 
 the cable-cars below, as they rumbled along with their 
 bells clanging sharply when they neared the crossings. 
 The atmosphere was thick with a damp haze; and there 
 was a halo about every yellow globe in the windows of the 
 bar-rooms at the four corners of the avenue. More fre- 
 quent, as the dismal day wore to an end, was the hoarse 
 and lugubrious tooting of the ferryboats in the East 
 River. ' ' * 
 
 5. " The old house, as when Florian talked of it after- 
 wards he always called it . . . really was an old house; 
 and an element of French descent in its inmates — descent 
 from Watteau the old court-painter, one of whose gallant 
 
 * Brander Matthews: Outlines in Local Color. 
 
44 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 pieces still hung in one of the rooms — might explain, 
 together with some other things, a noticeable trimness 
 and comely whiteness about everything there — the cur- 
 tains, the couches, the paint on the walls with which the 
 light and shadow played so delicately; might explain also 
 the tolerance of the great poplar in the garden, a tree 
 most often despised by English people, but which French 
 people love, having observed a certain fresh way its leaves 
 have of dealing with the wind, making it sound in never 
 so slight a stirring of the air, like running water. 
 
 " The old-fashioned, low wainscoting went round the 
 rooms and up the staircase with carved balusters and 
 shadowy angles, landing half-way up at a broad window, 
 with a swallow's nest below the sill, and the blossom of 
 an old pear-tree showing across it in late April, against the 
 blue, below which the perfumed juice of fallen fruit in 
 autumn was so fresh. At the next turning came the 
 closet, which held on its deep shelves the best china. 
 Little angel faces, and reedy flutings, stood out round the 
 fireplace of the children's rooms. And on the top of the 
 house above the large attic, where the white mice ran in 
 the twilight — an infinite, unexplored wonderland of 
 childish treasures, glass beads, empty scent-bottles still 
 sweet, thrum of colored silks, among its lumber — a flat 
 space of roof, railed round, gave a view of the neighboring 
 steeples; for the house, as I said, stood near a great city, 
 which sent up heavenwards, over the twisting weather- 
 vanes, not seldom, its beds of rolling clouds and smoke, 
 touched with storm or sunshine." * 
 
 What is the dominant impression in this description ? 
 Into what separate pictures does the impression resolve 
 
 * Pater: The Child in the House. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 45 
 
 itself? Trace out the parts and their relations in the 
 description, following the analogy of the tree and its 
 branches, suggested on pages 26-27. 
 
 6. ". . . The hens, a breed of whom . . . was an 
 immemorial heirloom in the Pyncheon family. ... All 
 hens are well worth studying for the piquancy and rich 
 variety of their manners; but by no possibility can there 
 have been other fowls of such odd appearance and deport- 
 ment as these ancestral ones. They probably embodied 
 the traditional peculiarities of their whole line of progeni- 
 tors, derived through an unbroken succession of eggs. . . . 
 
 ' ' Queer, indeed, they looked ! Chanticleer himself, 
 though stalking on two stilt-like legs, with the dignity of 
 interminable descent in all his gestures, was hardly bigger 
 than an ordinary partridge; his two wives were about the 
 size of quails; and as for the one chicken, it looked small 
 enough to be still in the egg, and, at the same time, suffi- 
 ciently old, withered, wizened, and experienced, to have 
 been the founder of an antiquated race. Instead of being 
 the youngest of the family, it rather seemed to have 
 aggravated into itself the ages, not only of these living 
 specimens of the breed, but of all its forefathers and fore- 
 mothers, whose united excellencies and oddities were 
 squeezed into its little body." * 
 
 How much in this is direct appeal to the senses and 
 how much is not ? What is the effect of this proportion ? 
 
 7. Study the relation and value of the details in the 
 following : 
 
 " And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops 
 of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and 
 all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind 
 
 * Hawthorne: TAe House of the Seven Gables, Chap. X, 
 
46 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY fVRITING. 
 
 of awe, that we may see it far away : a multitude of 
 pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid 
 of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, 
 and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath 
 into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, 
 and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and 
 delicate as ivory, — sculpture fantastic and involved, of 
 palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and 
 birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all 
 twined together into an endless network of buds and 
 plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of 
 angels, sceptered, and robed to the feet, and leaning to 
 each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among 
 the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves 
 beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light 
 as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first 
 its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the 
 walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated 
 stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine 
 spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse 
 and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, ' their 
 bluest veins to kiss ' — the shadow, as it steals back from 
 them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a 
 receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich 
 with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and 
 drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, 
 all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, 
 in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language 
 and of life — angels, and the signs of heaven, and the 
 labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the 
 earth; and above these, another range of glittering pin- 
 nacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers, 
 — a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 47 
 
 Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden 
 strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field 
 covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstacsy, the 
 crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss 
 themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of 
 sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had 
 been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had 
 inlaid them with coral and amethyst." * 
 
 8. Take up the subjects treated in Lesson IV, i, and 
 Lesson III, 1-4, and carry out the treatment into con- 
 siderably more detail. 
 
 9. Show the relation of these details to the first impres- 
 sion. 
 
 10. Write descriptions on some of the following sub- 
 jects, treating them in detail. f 
 
 (i) A tree, described so that some one else may be 
 able to recognize it. 
 
 (2) A lake, described to some one who insists that 
 
 the ocean is the only body of water worth look- 
 ing at ; or to some one who loves wild scenery. 
 
 (3) A hill-top. 
 
 (4) A bend of the river, described to a child. 
 
 (5) A country road, described to an artist. Treat it 
 
 so that he can tell what month of the year it is. 
 
 (6) A window full of flowers. 
 
 (7) A public park, described to a country boy or to 
 
 a farmer. 
 
 *Ruskin: The Stones of Venice; St. Mark's Cathedral,'Vo\.l\. 
 
 f The degree of detail reached will depend somewhat on the 
 purpose of the description. Any topic chosen, as well as the 
 audience to which the writing is addressed, should of course 
 be made specific. Nothing could be less stimulating than a 
 subject such as "A Tree," "A Lake." 
 
48 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 (8) A city street : (a) the shopping district on 
 
 ' ' bargain day " ; (6) the Bowery at night ; (c) 
 in a hard rain, late at night. 
 
 (9) A church interior, or that of any public building. 
 
 (10) A room interior, to preface the first act of a 
 
 play. 
 
 (11) A picture. (If a rather simple and little-known 
 
 subject be chosen, it is interesting to send the 
 descriptions to an artist, and get him to make 
 sketches from a few of them, which can then 
 be compared with the original.) 
 
 (12) A bird, or flower, described for identification 
 
 by some one else. 
 
 (13) A friend, described to some one who is to meet 
 
 her at the Grand Central Station. 
 When the students have written on one of these sub- 
 jects, let each read a fellow-student's paper and try to 
 give back to him in other language exactly the impression 
 it conveys. On this basis, — that of its effect on its au- 
 dience, — the writer may then re-work his description. 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 I. "I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I 
 approach it for the first time. Provincialism has no scale 
 of excellence in man or vegetable; it never knows a first- 
 rate article of either kind when it has it, and is constantly 
 taking second and third rate ones for Nature's best. I 
 have often fancied the tree was afraid of me, and that a 
 sort of shiver came over it as over a betrothed maiden 
 when she first stands before the unknown to whom she has 
 been plighted. Before the measuring tape the proudest 
 tree of them all quails and shrinks into itself. All those 
 stories of four or five men stretching their arms around it 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 49 
 
 and not touching each other's fingers, of one's pacing the 
 shadow at noon and making it so many hundred feet, die 
 upon its leafy lips in the presence of the awful ribbon 
 which has strangled so many false pretensions. 
 
 " As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly 
 for the object of my journey, the rounded tops of the elms 
 rose from time to time at the roadside. Wherever one 
 looked taller and fuller than the rest, I asked myself, — 
 Is this it .? ' But as I drew nearer, they grew smaller, — 
 or it proved, perhaps, that two standing in a line had 
 looked like one, and so deceived me. At last, all at 
 once, when I was not thinking of it, — I declare to you it 
 makes my flesh creep when I think of it now, — all at once 
 I saw a great green cloud swelling in the horizon, so vast, 
 so symmetrical, of such Olympian majesty and imperial 
 supremacy among the lesser forest-growths, that my heart 
 stopped short, then jumped at my ribs as a hunter springs 
 at a five-barred gate, and I felt all through me, without 
 need of uttering the words — ' This is it! ' 
 
 " You will find this tree described, with many others, 
 in the excellent Report upon the Trees and Shrubs of 
 Massachusetts. The author has given my friend the Pro- 
 fessor credit for some of his measurements, but measured 
 this tree himself, carefully. It is a grand elm for size of 
 trunk, spread of limbs, and muscular development, — one 
 of the first, perhaps the first, of the first class of New 
 England elms." * 
 
 If possible, find such a report as Holmes refers to, and 
 compare its effect with that of his description. Carry 
 forward his description into such detail as it would 
 naturally develop into. 
 
 * Holmes: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, X. 
 
5° A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 2. " Brown pools, very deep, very smooth, and very 
 quiet; pale golden yellow at the shallow side, where not 
 an inch of water covers the smooth pebbles, then darken- 
 ing as the water deepens through all the shades of gold 
 and brown to something darker and more terrible than 
 mere blackness. Out of this, and all around it, rise gray 
 rocks, almost white now in the dazzling weather. A thin 
 trickling thread of water still creeps on from pool to pool. 
 Its low music is the only sound I hear, except the hum of 
 the wild bee's wings as he flies down the summer stream 
 between its banks of flowers." * 
 
 Does the second sentence develop your impression 
 along the lines of the first ? What is the source of the 
 difficulty ? Rewrite the description so as to reconcile the 
 suggestions involved in "brown pools," etc, "dazzling 
 weather," " gray rocks," " all around it," " the summer 
 stream between its banks of flowers." 
 
 3. Determine in the following description what are the 
 most vivid parts, with the reason for this. Re-work the 
 whole, using as much of the material here given as seems 
 available and discarding the rest. Discover your reasons 
 for the changes. 
 
 "The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, 
 though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor 
 can it much concern one who has not long frequented it 
 or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for 
 its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. 
 It is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a 
 mile and three quarters in circumference, and contains 
 about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the 
 midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or 
 
 * P. G. Hamerton: A Painter's Camp. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 51 
 
 outlet except by the clouds and evaporation. The sur- 
 rounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height 
 of forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and east 
 they attain to about one hundred and one hundred and 
 fifty feet respectively, within a quarter and a third of a 
 mile. They are exclusively woodland. All our Concord 
 waters have two colors at least, one when viewed at a dis- 
 tance, and another, more proper, close at hand. The 
 first depends more on the light, and follows the sky. In 
 clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little dis- 
 tance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance all 
 appear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a 
 dark slate color. The sea, however, is said to be blue 
 one day and green another without any perceptible change 
 in the atmosphere. I have seen our river when, the 
 landscape being covered with snow, both water and ice 
 were almost as green as grass. Some consider blue ' to 
 be the color of pure water, whether liquid or .solid. ' But, 
 looking directly down into our waters from a boat, they 
 are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is blue at 
 one time and green at another, even from the same point 
 of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it 
 partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hilltop it 
 reflects the color of the sky, but near at hand it is of a 
 yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, 
 then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform 
 dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, 
 viewed even from a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the 
 shore. Some have referred this to the reflection of the 
 verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroad 
 sand-bank, and in the spring, before the leaves are 
 expanded,, and it may be simply the result of the prevail- 
 ing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the 
 
52 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 color of its iris. This is that portion, also, where in the 
 spring, the ice being warmed by the heat of the sun 
 reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted through 
 the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal about the 
 still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, when 
 much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the 
 waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because 
 there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little dis- 
 tance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such a 
 time, being on its surface, and looking with divided 
 vision, so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a 
 matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered 
 or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more 
 cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the original 
 dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last 
 appeared but muddy in comparison. It is a vitreous 
 greenish blue, as I remember it, like those patches of the 
 winter sky seen through cloud vistas in the west before 
 sundown. Yet a single glass of its water held up to the 
 light is as colorless as an equal quantity of air. It is well 
 known that a large plate of glass will have a green tint, 
 owing, as the makers say, to its ' body, ' but a small 
 piece of the same will be colorless. How large a body 
 of Walden water would be required to reflect a green tint 
 I have never proved. The water of our river is black or 
 a very dark brown to one looking directly down on it, 
 and, like that of most ponds, imparts to the body of one 
 bathing in it a yellowish tinge; but this water is of such 
 crystalline purity that the body of the bather appears of 
 an alabaster whiteness, still more unnatural, which, as the 
 limbs are magnified and distorted withal, produces a 
 monstrous effect, making fit studies for a Michael Angelo. 
 " The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 53 
 
 be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. 
 Paddling over it, you may see, many feet beneath the sur- 
 face, the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an 
 inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by their 
 transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic 
 fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter, 
 many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through 
 the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore 1 
 tossed my ax back on to the ice, but, as if some evil 
 genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into 
 one of the hole.s, where the water was twenty-five feet 
 deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked 
 through the hole, until I saw the ax a little on one side, 
 standing on its head, with its helve erect and gently sway- 
 ing to and fro with the pulse of the pond; and there it 
 might have stood erect and swaying till in the course of 
 time the handle rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. 
 Making another hole directly over it with an ice chisel 
 which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I 
 could find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a 
 slip-noose, which I attached to its end, and, letting it 
 down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and 
 drew it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the ax 
 out again. 
 
 " The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded 
 white stones like paving stones, excepting one or two 
 short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a 
 single leap will carry you into water over your head; and 
 were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be 
 the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite 
 side. Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, 
 and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds 
 at all in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little 
 
54 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 meadows recently overflowed, which do not properly 
 belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor 
 a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only a few 
 small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a 
 water-target or two ; all which, however, a bather might not 
 perceive; and these plants are clean and bright like the 
 element they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two 
 into the water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in 
 the deepest parts, where there is usually a little sediment, 
 probably from the decay of the leaves which have been 
 waited on to it so many successive falls, and a bright green 
 weed is brought up on anchors even in mid-winter." * 
 
 4. Determine the sources of weakness in the following, 
 and re-work the passage. 
 
 " I had now come in sight of the house. It is a large 
 building of brick, with stone quoins, and is in the Gothic 
 style of Queen Elizabeth's day, having been built in the 
 first year of her reign. The exterior remains very nearly 
 in its original state, and may be considered a fair specimen 
 of the residence of a wealthy country gentleman of those 
 days. A great gateway opens from (he park into a kind 
 of courtyard in front of the house, ornamented with a 
 grass-plot, shrubs, and flower-beds. The gateway is in 
 imitation of the ancient barbican; being a kind of outpost, 
 and flanked by towers; though evidently for mere orna- 
 ment, instead of defense. The front of the house is com- 
 pletely in the old style; with stone-shafted casements, a 
 great bow-window of heavy stonework, and a portal with 
 armorial bearings over it, carved in stone. At each corner 
 of the building is an octagon tower, surmounted by a gilt 
 ball and weather-cock. " ■(" 
 
 * Thoreau; Walden ; The Ponds. 
 
 •)• Irving: The Sketch Book ; SIratford-on-Avon. 
 
THE PROCESS OF DESCRIPTION. 55 
 
 5. " Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, 
 and not more than seven and a half feet high. This, 
 reader, is somewhat ambitiously styled, in my family, the 
 drawing-room; but, being contrived 'a double debt I0 
 pay,' it is also, and more justly, termed the library; for 
 it happens that books are the only article of property in 
 which I am richer than my neighbors. Of these I have 
 about five thousand, collected gradually since my 
 eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you 
 can into this room, make it populous with books; and, 
 furthermore, paint me a good fire; and furniture plain and 
 modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. 
 And near the fire paint me a tea-table; and (as it is clear 
 that no creature can come to see one on such a stormy 
 night) place only two cups and saucers in the tea-tray ; 
 and, if you know how to paint such a thing, symbolically 
 or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot — eternal a parte 
 ante, and a parte post; for I usually drink tea from eight 
 o'clock at night to four in the morning. And, as it is 
 very unpleasant to make tea, or to pour it out for one's 
 self, paint me a lovely young woman sitting at the 
 table." * 
 
 Is the device of the " painter" helpful ? The author 
 says elsewhere that it is a winter night; is this suggestion 
 followed up in the description .? If the painter set at his 
 task, would he know what colors to use .? Is there any 
 color in the description .? Re-work the description, mak- 
 ing such changes and additions as seem needed. 
 
 6. Write a description of a cozy library or study, seen 
 in the evening, developing considerable detail. 
 
 * De Quincey: Confessions, III, 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSI- 
 TION. 
 
 Description, we have seen, aims to take the place of 
 actual sense-experience; it is a substitute for the eye, for 
 the ear, for the finger-tips. Its purpose is to present 
 things as they appear to us. But the single and immediate 
 perceptions of eye and ear and finger-tips are only the first 
 stage of experience, not its last. Gradually, through the 
 exercise of our reasoning powers, we come to clearer and 
 fuller realization of the meaning of these sense-perceptions 
 and so arrive at convictions respecting the real nature of 
 the world around us. 
 
 When, therefore, we share these convictions with others, 
 we feel that we are not merely describing the object, but 
 expounding it; but in thus trying to give a fuller and 
 deeper sense of the reality than at first belonged to our 
 impressions, we shall naturally resort to those impressions 
 as being the channels of appeal through which we have 
 ourselves been approached. It is natural, too, that appeal 
 through these channels should be more successful than 
 any other. Suppose, for example, that we have, through 
 processes of reasoning too involved for complete analysis, 
 arrived at a conviction in regard to the character of an 
 acquaintance. He is, we think, slovenly, dishonest, and, 
 
 56 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 57 
 
 in short, undesirable as a companion. We may, of 
 course, express ourselves in this way,* but it may, on the 
 other hand, be more effective if instead of giving our 
 hearer simply the final result, we give him some of the 
 external experience through which we arrived at this result, 
 — if we sketch the appearance of the person, his dress, 
 his manner, his expression, a chance phrase or gesture 
 which we think significant. The result is likely to be a 
 more vivid notion of character on the part of our hearer 
 than if we had carefully named the qualities in that 
 character as we conceive it. 
 
 This employment of description as a means of interpre- 
 tation or exposition is, perhaps, more frequent than the 
 use of it as an end in itself. It is especially valuable in 
 the exposition of character, because all our convictions 
 regarding the character of others are gained through 
 observation of its external manifestations in appearance, 
 manner, voice, conversation, etc., and so we can usually 
 convey them to others most effectively if we do so by 
 means of these same external manifestations. 
 
 This is the essence of true portrait-painting, which is in 
 principle nothing but interpretative, that is, expository 
 description, the description being done directly, in color, 
 instead of indirectly, in words; and the difference between 
 the "speaking likeness " and the " wooden " or " life- 
 less " one depends merely upon the power of the artist to 
 select for presentation those elements in the face which 
 are really most influential in giving rise to our conception 
 of the person's character. 
 
 For an appreciation of genuine portrait-painting, Mr. 
 Morley's comment on a Rousseau portrait is worth citing: 
 
 * Cf. under definition pp. 156 ff. and revert to the Brutus 
 and Antony speeches, cf. p. 8. 
 
58 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 " There is in an English collection a portrait of Jean 
 Jacques, which was painted during his residence in this 
 country by a provincial artist, and which, singular and 
 displeasing as it is, yet lights up for us many a word and 
 passage in Rousseau's life here and elsewhere, which the 
 ordinary engravings, and the trim self-complacency of the 
 statue on the little island at Geneva, would leave very 
 incomprehensible. It is almost as appalling in its realism 
 as some of the dark pits that open before the reader of the 
 Confessions. Hard struggles with objective difficulty and 
 external obstacle wear deep furrows in the brow, and 
 throw into the glance a solicitude, half penetrating and 
 defiant, half dejected. When a man's hindrances have 
 sprung up from within, and the ill-fought battle of his 
 days has been with his own passions and morbid broodings 
 and unchastened dreams, the eye and the facial lines that 
 stamp character tell the story of that profound moral 
 defeat, which is unlighted by the memories of resolute 
 combat with evil and weakness, and leaves only external 
 desolation and the misery that is formless. Our English 
 artist has produced a vision from that prose Inferno which 
 is made so populous in the modern epoch by impotence 
 of will ; and those who have seen the picture may easily 
 understand how largely the character of the original, at 
 the time when it was painted, must have been pregnant 
 with harrassing confusion and distress." * 
 
 The passage illustrates, too, how easy is the transition, 
 for interpretative purposes, from the medium of color to 
 the medium of words. The unknown painter interpreted 
 Rousseau by his discriminative portrayal of " the eye and 
 the facial lines that stamp character." The biographer 
 
 * John Morley : Rousseau, Vol. II, p. 282. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 59 
 
 simply interprets this interpretation, that none may miss 
 its significance. 
 
 What Mr. Morley has done for this portrait, Carlyle has 
 d jne for the portrait of Dante : 
 
 " To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of all faces 
 that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on 
 vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it, the 
 deathless sorrow and pain, the known victory which is also 
 deathless; — significant of the whole history of Dante. I 
 think it is the mournfulest face that ever was painted from 
 reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There 
 is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, 
 gentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed 
 into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud 
 hopeless pain. A soft ethereal soul looking out so stern, 
 implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick- 
 ribbed ice ! Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful 
 one; the lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the 
 thing that is eating out his heart, — as if it were withal a 
 mean insignificant thing; as if he whom it had power to 
 torture and strangle were greater than it. The face of 
 one wholly in protest and life-long unsurrendering battle, 
 against the world. Affection all converted into indigna- 
 tion; — an implacable indignation; slow, equable, silent, 
 like that of a god ! The eye, too, it looks out in a kind 
 of surprise, a kind of inquiry, why the world was of such 
 a sort ! This is Dante : so he looks, this ' voice of ten 
 silent centuries,' and sings us ' his mystic unfathomable 
 song.' " * 
 
 Note the phrase near the end, " This is Dante." It is 
 an indication of the writer's sense that he is here dealing 
 
 * Carlyle: Heroes and Hero-worship ; The Hero as Poet, 
 
6o A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 not with appearance, but with reality, — or rather, that 
 appearance, rightly interpreted, is reality, — and of his 
 feeling, when he finished portraying the face, that he had 
 portrayed the man himself. 
 
 In both these passages the writer is dealing with a por- 
 trait, and we have, therefore, an exposition of an exposi- 
 tion. That the process is essentially the same as if he 
 had dealt directly with the original, will be evident from 
 the following passage where such is actually the case: 
 
 " The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty 
 perhaps ; and gave you the idea of a life that had been full 
 of sufferings; a life heavy-laden, half- vanquished, still 
 swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other 
 bewilderment. Brow and head were round, and of mas- 
 sive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The 
 deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of 
 inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from them, as 
 in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and 
 air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby 
 and irresolute, expressive of weakness under possibility 
 of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees 
 bent, and stooping attitude; in walking, he rather shuffled 
 than decisively stept; and a lady once remarked, he never 
 could fix which side of the garden walk would suit him 
 best, but continually shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and 
 kept trying both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely 
 much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, 
 had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong; 
 he spoke as if preaching — you would have said, preach- 
 ing earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things. 
 I still recollect his ' object ' and ' subject,' terms of con- 
 tinual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he 
 sang and snuffled them into ' om-m-mject ' and ' sum-m- 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 6i 
 
 mject, ' with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as he 
 rolled along. No talk, in his century or in any other, 
 could be more surprising. ' ' * 
 
 Here Carlyle, in dealing with the poet whose friend he 
 had been, does exactly what he did in dealing with the 
 poet of centuries ago; in the latter case he dealt with a 
 face whose features were furnished him through the inter- 
 preting brush of the Florentine artist ; in the former case, 
 it was his own interpreting eye on which he relied. Not, 
 however, the eye alone; for here the wealth of his experi- 
 ence gave him a range of appeal from which in dealing 
 with Dante he was cut off, and the whole passage is a fine 
 instance of the manifold devices to which one may resort 
 in presenting " the man himself. " We get not merely the 
 face but the full-length figure, and this not in repose 
 alone, but in characteristic activity. Characteristic habits, 
 tricks of gesture and manner, quality and intonation of 
 voice, are all used to serve this final end, the presentation 
 of the man's self. 
 
 Clearly, there is no reason why the expositor should 
 stop here at features and gesture and tone of voice. He 
 may widen his field, and in the constantly maintained 
 purpose of presenting the real thing, ' ' the man himself, ' ' 
 he may call in the aid of all the man's words, his habits, 
 his tastes, his manners; he may touch upon his life-history 
 or treat it m full, he may examine his writings. His 
 exposition may thus gain in completeness and elaboration, 
 but it is essentially all work of the same kind. 
 
 Thus Green's exposition of the character of Queen 
 Elizabeth | is an instance of wonderfully successful expo- 
 sition, and all the more interesting because the reader can, 
 
 * Carlyle: Life of Stirling. \ Cited on pp. 115-130. 
 
62 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITINC. 
 
 if he will, go to the historian's sources and see how he 
 has converted description and chronicle-narrative into 
 exposition by the interpretative activity of his mind. His 
 material he found in the records of Elizabeth's state acts, 
 in her written words, in the careless report of her spoken 
 phrases, or of her gestures, of her manners, her prefer- 
 ences, her influence on others, and so on. Each thing 
 taken alone is comparatively meaningless; as used by 
 Green it becomes instinct with meaning and no one who 
 has once attentively r^ad the passage can ever get awa) 
 from the impression of character there conveyed. 
 
 Similarly when Carlyle wrote his lecture on Mahomet, 
 his object was to interpret to his hearers the character ol 
 the man, to make them see him as Carlyle believed him 
 really to have been. And as Green gathered up material 
 from chronicle and state paper and contemporary gossip, 
 and made it yield its meaning, so Carlyle gathered up the 
 vague and seemingly conflicting testimony of tradition and 
 unified it by a clear line of interpretation so that it took 
 its proper place in his exposition of the hero-soul. Having 
 less to work from than Green, he has of necessity resorted 
 to different devices to attain his end. Where Green ex- 
 plains as well as sets forth the incongruities in Elizabeth's 
 character by tracing her descent, Carlyle has to interpret 
 the nature of his prophet iu the light of general race- 
 features and tribal conditions. But the underlying 
 method is the same, as the purpose is the same. 
 
 In Pater's Leonardo da Vinci,* the end is the portrayal 
 of Leonardo the artist, but artist is taken in a wide sense, 
 to imply, not merely a painter, but a lover of art in all its 
 aspects, and of all knowledge as it affects art. Hence 
 
 * Pater: The Rtnaissance. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION 63 
 
 the means employed are even more various than in these 
 other instances. Use is made of the tradition as to 
 Leonardo's early life, of his personal appearance and 
 manners, his friends, his position, his influence on them. 
 Then his actual art-work is considered, as throwing light 
 on the artist himself; his studies and fantastic designs, 
 his caricatures, his finished paintings. It is in this con- 
 nectioh that his Mona Lisa is discussed — a discussion 
 which, taken by itself, is simply an interpretation of the 
 idea embodied in a work of art, but taken in its context 
 has yet another use as showing what were the underlying 
 ideals and purposes of the artist. 
 
 Thus we see that our impressions of the tangible world 
 may have different values for us and we may in communi- 
 cating them to others have different purposes. We may 
 want to convey simply our mmediate sense-impression, or 
 we may want to convey our sense of the meaning of the 
 impression, our conviction as to the nature of the thing per- 
 ceived. Not that any antithesis is assumed between appear- 
 ance and reality. Appearance rightly understood is reality. 
 But because this right understanding does not always 
 inhere in the immediate sense-impressions, because the 
 reality is implicit rather than explicit in their sensuous 
 appeal, the record of this appeal, where its full significance 
 has been perceived, ought to be so made as to carry this 
 significance with it. When the description subserves such 
 an interpretative purpose, we call it expository, since it 
 has ceased to be a final end and has become a means. 
 But there is naturally no definite boundary to be fixed 
 between the one and the other kind of thing, and we may 
 often be in doubt how to class a given bit of writing. 
 Thus the Ruskin description of St. Mark's * is perhaps not 
 •' Cf. pp. 23-24. 
 
64 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 merely description, though we have classed it as such. 
 All its phrases do, indeed, appeal to the senses, but the 
 sum of their appeal is not to the senses merely; for as we 
 read we begin to perceive a meaning in this sense appeal, 
 we begin to share a little of Ruskin's sense of an inherent 
 idea embodied in sensuous expression. If we do feel this, 
 and just so far as we do, the description has proved itself 
 to be interpretative, that is, expository. 
 
 Since, then, we cannot rightly distinguish between 
 description and exposition, we shall not expect to find any 
 real difference in method. We saw that in description 
 the order was a development from the general to the 
 specific; that the first impression contained a germ of the 
 final one so that tRe detailed perceptions grew out of the 
 general, as the plant, to its slenderest ramifications, 
 develops from the seed, always keeping its wholeness, even 
 in its most delicate complexity. The same is true of 
 expository writing. Of course, where it resorts wholly to 
 description, the laws of description hold good, and the 
 interpretation is simply implicit, in the selective emphasis 
 of these descriptions. Where the interpretation is more 
 explicit, the first "general impression " will be one not of 
 sense, but of thought, but the principle is the same. Thus 
 Mr. Burroughs got from the cardinal-flower an impression 
 whose chief constituent was a sense of redness. Carlyle 
 got from the picture of Dante an impression whose chief 
 constituent was a sense of spiritual sensitiveness perverted 
 into hardness. The one impression is immediately sen- 
 suous, the other is not. With this difference, however, the 
 development of the impression is fundamentally the same 
 in each case. In the second case the two elements of the 
 impression, approximately suggested by the terms ' ' sensi- 
 tiveness " and "hardness," are each followed out into 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 65 
 
 the elements that compose them, with an occasional refer- 
 ence to some physical trait of the face from which the im- 
 pression sprang. The following diagram (fig. 2, page 66) 
 may crudely illustrate the process, though no diagram can 
 properly represent it. Similarly, in the passage descrip- 
 tive of Coleridge, we have a growth from the general to the 
 detailed, as is roughly shown in the diagram on page 67. 
 
 So far we have considered expository writing as it deals 
 with one broad field of subjects — those having to do with 
 the character of men. In this field there appears to be 
 larger opportunity for it than in the lower orders of nature. 
 It may be partly because of our scanty knowledge that the 
 latter seem more simple and external, or it may be that 
 their complexity is really nearer the surface and so more 
 easily mastered by the senses; but we certainly feel that 
 pure description is able to deal more adequately with 
 ' ' nature ' ' than with man ; that when we try adequately 
 to portray the passing of rain over a lake we make a less 
 profound appeal to the interpretative activities of the 
 senses than when we try to portray the passing of an ex- 
 pression over a face. 
 
 There is, however, another field for interpretative 
 description, though one intimately connected with man — 
 the field, namely, of man's activity in art. In endeavor- 
 ing to convey an adequate notion of a picture or a statue, 
 we have somewhat the same feeling as in regard to a face 
 — that there is need not of description merely, but of in- 
 terpretation. There is, however, this difference, that in 
 the picture there is the element of artistic purpose, not 
 found in the face. The artist looks at the world around 
 him and seeing it in a certain way, he fashions his artistic 
 embodiment of it so as to express his way of seeing; he 
 looks at things, that is, with an interpreting eye and his 
 
66 
 
 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
DESCRIPTION ]N ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 67 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
68 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY MERITING. 
 
 work, consciously or unconsciously to himself, embodies 
 his interpretation. And so as we stand before a true work 
 of art — say, a painting — we feel that it has, as the phrase 
 goes, ' ' a meaning ' ' ; that is, we are, at first rather 
 vaguely, conscious that the painted scene somehow means 
 more to us than the real scene would have meant. This 
 is what Ruskin means when he says: " Although, to the 
 small, conceited, and affected painter displaying his 
 narrow knowledge and tiny dexterities, our only word 
 may be, ' Stand aside from between that nature and me, ' 
 yet to the great imaginative painter — greater a million 
 times in every faculty of soul than we — our word may 
 wisely be, ' Come between this nature and me — this 
 nature which is too great and too wonderful for me ; temper 
 it for me, interpret it to me; let me see with your eyes, 
 and hear with your ears, and have help and strength from 
 your great spirit. ' " * 
 
 Gradually this vague sense develops into a conscious- 
 ness of just what the meaning of the picture is, how the 
 original has been interpreted. If we try to express this 
 to some one else, we shall be expounding the picture just 
 as the picture is expounding its subject in nature. We 
 are' dealing with something which is itself interpretative 
 and are only recognizing or emphasizing, by our apprecia- 
 tions, the interpretation already implicit in our subject. 
 This double process, the interpretation of nature by the 
 picture and of the picture by the " appreciator, ' ' as Pater 
 might have called himself, is illustrated by this passage 
 from one of his essays: "In an actual landscape we see 
 a long white road, lost suddenly on the hill-verge. That 
 is the matter of one of the etchings of Btr. Legros; only, 
 
 * Modern Painters, Part III, Chap. X. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 69 
 
 in this etching, it is informed by an indwelling solemnity 
 of expression, seen upon it or half-seen, within the limits 
 of an exceptional moment; or caught from his own 
 mood, perhaps, but which he maintains as the very 
 essence of the thing, throughout his work. ' ' * How the 
 interpretative work of the portrait-painter may in its turn 
 be followed by the appreciative pen of the writer, we have 
 seen in the case of Rousseau and Dante. For examples 
 of art-exposition — or, as it is oftener and less happily 
 called, art-criticism — we need only turn to the writings of 
 Ruskin and Pater. One citation may suffice, as exempli- 
 fying the treatment of a very different subject from those 
 just taken up; it is Ruskin's interpretation of Botticelli's 
 Fortitude : 
 
 " But Botticelli's Fortitude is no match, it may be, for 
 any that are coming. Worn, somewhat ; and not a little 
 weary, instead of standing ready for all comers, she is 
 sitting, — apparently in reverie, her fingers playing rest- 
 lessly and idly, — nay, I think — even nervously, about the 
 hilt of her sword. 
 
 ' ' For her battle is not to begin to-day ; nor did it begin 
 yesterday. Many a morn and eve have passed since it 
 began — and now — is this to be the ending day of it ? 
 And if this — by what manner of end ? 
 
 " This is what Sandro's Fortitude is thinking, and the 
 playing fingers about the sword-hilt would fain let it fall, 
 if it might be : and yet, how swiftly and gladly will they 
 close on it, when the far-off trumpet blows, which she 
 will hear through all her reverie ! " f 
 
 Note here the way in which the writer, following the 
 painter, makes the physical fact of attitude, of gesture, 
 
 * The Renaissance, p. 141. 
 f Mornings in Florence ; The Third Morning. 
 
70 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 hold in itself spiritual signiticance. It is virtually the 
 same process as that in Carlyle's exposition of Coleridge. 
 
 In thus dealing with works of art, however, we must of 
 course carefully guard against seeming to dissever the 
 art-form from the content, to dissociate the sensuous ex- 
 pression from the meaning. For the ideal of art, as Pater 
 especially is always emphasizing, consists in the attain- 
 ment of complete identity between its bcnsuous appeal and 
 Its appeal to the "imaginative reason,"* and though, 
 perhaps, the two things are intellectually separable, their 
 actual union is the thing to be always recognized ; the 
 treatment of a picture which first describes it, and then 
 proceeds to explain its meaning as something quite 
 separable from it, is in most cases the farthest possible 
 from a truly appreciative treatment. 
 
 Such identity in the means of appeal is, indeed, not 
 always reached in painting, and we find it ranging from 
 frankly allegorical work, involving as nearly as may be a 
 severence of form and content, to symbolism so subtle as 
 to be really inseparable from the form of its expression, or 
 a naturalism whose interpretative element is even more 
 inextricably bound up in its imitative. Of the first order, 
 the paintings of Fra Angelico and sometimes of Giotto 
 may serve as examples; of the second, those of Leonardo 
 da Vinci, impressing us as almost overweighted with 
 their non-sensuous content which is yet inseparable from 
 its sensuous embodiment, — " symbolical inventions in 
 which the ostensible subject is used, not as a matter lor 
 definite pictorial realization, but as the starting-point of 
 a train of sentiment as subtle and vague as a piece of 
 music," \ — and of the last, in different ways, the work of 
 
 * Cf . Pater; The Renaissance i The School of Gior^ione. 
 \ Pater: The Renaissance, p. 123. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 7^ 
 
 Titian, of Raphael (when he is not forcedly allegorical), 
 of Michelangelo, etc. 
 
 The expository comment on art will naturally vary in 
 somewhat the same way. Ruskin's expositions of the 
 naive, semi-allegorical painters, itself shows a tendency 
 to set off form ft-om content, whereas Pater's appreciation 
 of the Renaissance art shows an interpretation of the 
 sensuous by the "imaginative reason." Art-criticism 
 will follow its subject, and keeping as its aim " the seeing 
 of the thing as in itself it really is, " it will simply see 
 what is there to be seen, and try to make others see the 
 same. 
 
 In its interpretative character, painting is not alone 
 among the arts. Poetry has, at least since Arnold, been 
 accorded rather special recognition as the interpreter of 
 life, — as a " criticism of life " : * 
 
 ' ' The grand power of poetry is its interpretative power ; 
 by which I mean not a power of drawing out in black and 
 white an explanation of the mystery of the universe, but 
 the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a 
 wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of 
 our relations with them. When this sense is awakened 
 in us, as to objects without us, we feel ourselves to be in 
 contact with the essential nature of those objects." f It 
 is in connection with Maurice de Guerin that Arnold 
 writes this, and the writings of Guerin himself do indeed 
 justify it; his descriptions — or more properly, expositions 
 — of natural scenery are like Pater's in a certain rare 
 union of the sensuous with the interpretative that recalls 
 the work of great landscape-painters. If we turn to 
 another field, we find in Shakespeare's plays an illustra- 
 tion of the interpretation of human character through 
 
 * Cf. Arnold: The Study of Poetry. 
 f Arnold: Maurice de Guerin. 
 
72 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 action, while in their treatment of nature they have that 
 illuminating power which Arnold calls " natural magic. "* 
 
 When we try to interpret poetry, then, we are trying to 
 make others feel its full value, and as in the case of paint- 
 ing, we shall do this by conveying to others the whole 
 effect of the poem on us, — the images it suggests, the 
 mood it induces, the perceptions we have gained through 
 it of relations in things not before understood. 
 
 In the following citations these are the means used: — 
 De Quincey, vaguely conscious of a certain effect pro- 
 duced upon him by the knocking on the gate in Macbeth, 
 institutes an inquiry into the source of this effect, and by 
 the very inquiry makes more clear just what the nature of 
 his feeling was, while the discussion also brings us to a 
 clearer perception of the significance of this passage in the 
 play. Dr. Furness, in showing why much of Shakespeare's 
 poetry cannot be perfectly translated, investigates the 
 sources of this untranslatable effect in the fullness of sug- 
 gestive meaning possessed by the words and the metre. 
 Such comment interprets the lines in the same way that we 
 may interpret the work of a painter by examining its 
 characteristic traits of color and form. Again, Mrs. 
 Oliphant interprets Coleridge's mystical poem by giving 
 us in series the pictures that arise in her mind as she 
 reads, with the mood, the perception of new meanings in 
 things, that accompanies these pictures. 
 
 (I) 
 
 ' Whence is that knocking ? 
 
 How is't with me, when every noise appals me ? 
 What hands are here ? ha ! they pluck out mine eyes. 
 Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
 Clean from my hand? No. thi.s my hand will rather 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine. 
 Making the green one red.' 
 
 Macbeth, Act 2, Scene i. 
 * Maurice de Guerin, 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 73 
 
 " From my boyish days I had always felt a great per- 
 plexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knock- 
 ing at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, 
 produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could 
 account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the 
 murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; 
 yet, however obstinately I endeavored with my under- 
 standing to comprehend this, for many years I never could 
 see why it should produce such an effect. . . . 
 
 " In fact, my understanding said positively that it could 
 not produce any effect. But I knew better; I felt that it 
 did ; and I waited and clung to the problem until further 
 knowledge should enable me to solve it. At length, in 
 1 8 1 2, Mr. Williams made his debut on the stage of Ratcliffe 
 Highway, and executed those unparalleled murders which 
 have procured for him such a brilliant and undying repu- 
 tation. On which murders, by the way, I must observe, 
 that in one respect they have had an ill effect, by making 
 the connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his taste, and 
 dissatisfied by anything that has since been done in that 
 line. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson 
 of his ; and, as an amateur once said to me in a querulous 
 tone, ' There has been absolutely nothing doing since his 
 time, or nothing that's worth speaking of.' But this is 
 wrong ; for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great 
 artists, and born with the genius of Mr. Williams. Now 
 it will be remembered, that in the first of these murders 
 (that of the Marrs), the same incident (of a knocking at 
 the door, soon after the work of extermination was com- 
 plete), did actually occur, which the genius of Shakespeare 
 has invented; and all good judges, and the most eminent 
 dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakespeare's sug- 
 gestion, as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then, 
 
74 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own 
 feehng, in opposition to my understanding; and I again 
 set myself to study the problem; at length I solved it to 
 my own satisfaction; and my solution is this. Murder, 
 in ordinary cases, where sympathy is wholly directed to 
 the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse 
 and vulgar horror; and for this reason, that it flings the 
 interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct 
 by which we cleave to life; an instinct, which, as being 
 indispensable to the- primal law of self-preservation, is the 
 same in kind (though different in degree), amongst all 
 living creatures; this instinct, therefore, because it anni- 
 hilates all distinctions, and degrades the greatest of men 
 to the level of ' the poor beetle that we tread on, ' exhibits 
 human nature in its most abject and humiliating attitude. 
 Such an attitude would little suit the purposes of the 
 poet. What then must he do ? He must throw the 
 interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with 
 him (of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a 
 sympathy by which we enter into his feelings, and are 
 made to understand them, — not a sympathy of pity or 
 approbation). In the murdered person, all strife of 
 thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are 
 crushed by one overwhelming panic; the fear of instant 
 death smites him ' with its petrific mace. ' But in the 
 murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to, 
 there must be raging some great storm of passion, — 
 jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred, — which will create 
 a hell within him ; and into this hell we are to look. 
 
 " In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own 
 enormous and teeming faculty of creation, Shakespeare 
 has introduced two murderers; and, as usual in his hands, 
 they are remarkably discriminated; but, though in Mac- 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 75 
 
 beth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife, the tiger 
 spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught chiefly by 
 contagion from her, — yet, as both were finally involved in 
 the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of necessity is 
 finally to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed ; 
 and on its own account, as well as to make it a more 
 proportionable antagonist to the unoffending nature of 
 their victim, ' the gracious Duncan, ' and adequately to 
 expound ' the deep damnation of his taking off, ' this was 
 to be expressed with peculiar energy. We were to be 
 made to feel that the human nature, that is, the divine 
 nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all 
 creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man, — was 
 gone, vanished, extinct ; and that the fiendish nature had 
 taken its place. And, as this effect is marvelously 
 accomplished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, 
 so it is finally consummated by the expedient under con- 
 sideration; and it is to this that I now solicit the reader's 
 attention. If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, 
 daughter, or sister, in a fainting fit, he may chance to 
 have observed that the most affecting moment in such a 
 spectacle is that in which a sigh and a stirring announce 
 the recommencement of suspended life. Or, if the reader 
 has ever been present in a vast metropolis, on the day 
 when some great national idol was carried in funeral pomp 
 to his grave, and chancing to walk near the course through 
 which it passed, has felt powerfully, in the silence and 
 desertion of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary 
 business, the deep interest which at that moment was 
 possessing the heart of man, — if all at once he should hear 
 the death-like stillness broken up by the sound of wheels 
 rattling away from the scene, and making known that the 
 transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at 
 
76 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITWG. 
 
 no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and 
 pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting, 
 as at that moment when the suspension ceases, and the 
 goings-on of human life are suddenly resumed. All 
 action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and 
 made apprehensible, by reaction. Now apply this to the 
 case in Macbeth. Here, as I have said, the retiring of 
 the human heart, and the entrance of the fiendish heart, 
 was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world 
 has stept in; and the murderers are taken out of the 
 region of human things, human purposes, human desires. 
 They are transfigured : Lady Macbeth is ' unsexed ' ; 
 Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman ; both are 
 conformed to the image of devils; and the world of devils 
 is suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed 
 and made palpable .? In order that a new world may step 
 in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers, 
 and the murder, must be insulated — cut off by an im- 
 measurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession 
 of human affairs — locked up and sequestered in some deep 
 recess ; we must be made sensible that the world of 
 ordinary life is suddenly arrested — laid asleep — tranced — 
 racked into a dread armistice; time must be annihilated; 
 relation to things without abolished ; and all must pass 
 self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of 
 earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is done, 
 when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of 
 darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds; the 
 knocking at the gate is heard ; and it makes known 
 audibly that the reaction has commenced; the human has 
 made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are 
 beginning to beat again ; and the re-establishment of the 
 goings-on of the world in which we live first makes us 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 77 
 
 profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had 
 suspended them." * 
 
 (2) "A fairer test of translation is to be found in lines 
 where words have a peculiar signification and an inherent 
 charm to English ears, without which the whole passage is 
 naught, and where, if a single word be changed, the spell 
 is snapped, just as the fractured point of a Prince Rupert's 
 tear reduces the crystal globule to sand. For instance, 
 take those lines which lago utters as he sees Othello 
 approaching after the first administration of the ' poison- 
 ous mineral. ' 
 
 " ' Look where he comes: not poppy, nor mandragora, 
 Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
 Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
 Which thou owd'st yesterday.' 
 
 " It seems sheer impertinence to attempt to point out to 
 English readers any especial charm where every phrase is 
 full of beauty, but for my present purpose I must be 
 pardoned for calling attention to three words here. Is 
 there any other word in the English tongue that can be 
 substituted for ' drowsy ' ? Sleepy certainly cannot. 
 There is no resistance in sleepy. For sleep one composes 
 his limbs, and repose is wooed. Narcotic is worse, it has 
 a repulsive odor; and soporific is pedantic. But in 
 ' drowsy ' there is half-wakefulness, utter weariness, and 
 nodding resistance to the potent drug. Thus, also, 
 ' syrup, ' which is not Juice, or potion, or essence, or 
 extract, nor anything but that heavy liquid sweetness 
 whose very sluggishness suggests its power in reserve, 
 whose inertness by contrast renders its essence more 
 quick, and it is redolent of its home in the East. Lastly 
 
 *De Quincey: Essays in Literary Criticism; On the Knocking 
 at the Gate in Macbeth, Works, Vol. IV. 
 
78 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 comes 'medicine,' with its suggestion of illness, and 
 disease, and restoration. Of course all the other words 
 in these lines are exquisitely chosen, but then they are 
 such as can be transferred readily from one language to 
 another. The vague sonorousness of ' mandragora ' 
 speaks quite as powerfully, it may be supposed, to French 
 or German or Italian ears as to ours. But the three 
 words which I have specified, ' drowsy, ' ' syrup, ' and 
 'medicine,' must be felt, or the translation falls short; 
 it may be through the fault of the translator or through 
 the deficiency of his mother tongue. 
 
 ' ' Furthermore, in examining the following translations, 
 another question suggests itself, — a question which I have 
 never been able to answer satisfactorily. Should a trans- 
 lation of poetry be in prose or rhythm .? In the prose 
 translations which follow, the suggestions of the original 
 are reproduced somewhat more completely than in those 
 in rhythm. But, alack the day, what does the passage 
 amount to without the exquisite cadence of ' Nor all the 
 drowsy syrups of the world .? ' which seems, in its undu- 
 lation merely, to suggest the quiet ' unfurling ' of twilight 
 and the solemn tolling of the curfew. ' In every lan- 
 guage, ' said Southey, ' there is a magic of words as 
 untranslatable as the sesame in the Arabian tale, — you 
 may retain the meaning, but if the words be changed the 
 spell is lost. ' Of course, this is true in German. Not 
 while the world lasts will Gretchen's song be translated: 
 
 " ' Meine Ruh ist hin, 
 
 Mein Herz ist schwer.' " * 
 
 The only possible exception to be taken is to the 
 quotation from Southey: " You may retain the meaning, 
 
 * H. H. Furness: Variorum Sliakespeare ; Othello, pp. 453-4. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 79 
 
 but if the words be changed, the spell is lost. ' ' For Dr. 
 Furness' whole masterly appreciation goes to show that 
 when the " spell " is lost, a part of the meaning is lost 
 too. 
 
 (3) " The life of every day is going on gaily, the wed- 
 ding guests are close to the festal doors, when Mystery 
 and Wonder suddenly interpose in the way, shutting out 
 everything else around. The sounds of the other exist- 
 ence are heard through them, and even by glimpses that 
 life is visible — the merry minstrels ' nodding their heads, ' 
 the bride in her blushes — but the unwilling listener has 
 entered into the shadow, and the unseen has got hold of 
 him. It is a parable, not only of the ship and the 
 albatross (which is hard of interpretation), but of man- 
 kind, a stranger upon earth, ' moving about in worlds not 
 realized,' always subject to be seized upon by powers 
 unknown to which he is of kin, though he understands 
 them not. ' There is more of the invisible than the visi- 
 ble in the world, plures esse Naiuras invisibiles quam visibiles 
 in rerum universitate,' is the poet's motto, and with a 
 great splendor and force of imagination he enforces his 
 text. 'There was a ship,' quoth he, — and the weird 
 vessel glides before the unwilling listener's eyes, so that 
 he can see nothing else. It comes between him and the 
 feast, between him and those figures of his friends which 
 flit like ghosts out of every door. Which is the real, and 
 which the vision } The mind grows -giddy, and ceases to 
 be able to judge; and while everything tangible dis- 
 appears, the unseen sweeps triumphantly in and holds 
 possession, more real, more true, more unquestionable, 
 than anything that eye can see. 
 
 " This was what Coleridge meant when, seated on the 
 breezy hillside with shadow and sunshine pursuing each 
 
8o A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 other over the broad country at his feet, he took in hand 
 to add to the common volume a poem which should deal 
 with the supernatural and invisible ' so as to transfer from 
 our outward nature a human interest and a semblance of 
 truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of the imagi- 
 nation that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, 
 which constitutes poetic faith. ' We might even find a 
 further symbolism in the scene, within which this tale of 
 mystery and fate came into being, and the circumstances 
 which have framed, in a lovely picture of greenness and 
 summer beauty, indulgent skies and youthful happiness, 
 one of the gravest, profoundest, and most lofty utterances 
 of poetry — a song which was ' chanted with happy heart, ' 
 with pleasant breaks of laughter and eager discussion, 
 with glad gazings upon sun and shadow, with many a 
 playful interruption and criticism — out of the heart of as 
 sad a life as ever enacted itself in tragic pain and darkness 
 before the eyes of men. 
 
 ' ' Nor was the story of the Mariner itself unworthy of 
 its aim, or of the wonderful wealth of poetic resource 
 poured forth upon it. When the struggle between the 
 actual and the invisible is over, and the Mariner is 
 triumphant, what a stillness as of the great deep falls upon 
 the strain! The sun comes up out of the sea, and goes 
 down into it — grand image of the loneliness, the isolation 
 from all other created things, of that speck upon the 
 boundless, noiseless waters. Throughout the poem this 
 sentiment of isolation is preserved with a magical and 
 almost impressive reality; all the action is absolutely shut 
 up within the doomed ship. The storm, and the mist, 
 and the snow, the flitting vision of the albatross, the 
 specter vessel against the sunset, the voices of the spirits, 
 all derive their importance from that one center of human 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 8i 
 
 life, driven before the tyrannous wind or held at the 
 pleasure of the still more terrible calm, yet the only thing 
 that gives meaning to either. The one man who is the 
 chronicler of all, and to whose fate everything refers, is 
 never withdrawn from our attention for a moment. He 
 is, as it were, the epitome of humankind, the emblem of 
 the sinner and sufferer, shut up within those rotting 
 bulwarks, beneath those sails so thin and sere. The 
 awful trance of silence in which his being is involved, — a 
 silence of awe and pain, yet of a dumb, enduring, uncon- 
 querable force,- — descends upon us and takes possession 
 of our spirits also; no loud bassoon, no festal procession, 
 can break the charm of that intense yet passive conscious- 
 ness. We grow silent with him, ' with throat unslaked, 
 with black lips baked, ' in a sympathy which is the very 
 climax of poetic pain. And then what touches of tender- 
 ness are those that surprise us in this numbness and trance 
 of awful solitude — 
 
 " ' O happy living things ! no tongue 
 
 Their beauty might declare: 
 
 A spring of love rushed from my heart, 
 
 And I blessed them unaware; 
 
 Sure my kind saint took pity on me, 
 
 And I blessed them unaware ' — 
 
 or this other which comes after the horror of the 
 reanimated bodies, the ghastly crew of the dead-alive: — 
 
 " ' For when it dawned, they dropped their arms, 
 And clustered round the mast; 
 Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, 
 And from their bodies passed. 
 Around, around, flew each sweet sound, 
 Then darted to the sun: 
 Slowly the sounds came back again, 
 Now mixed, now one by one. 
 Sometimes a-dropping from the sky 
 
82 A COURSE IN EXPOS/ TORY fVRITJNG. 
 
 I heard the sky-lark sing; 
 
 Sometimes all little birds that are, 
 
 How they seemed to fill the sea and air 
 
 With their sweet jargoning ! 
 
 And now 'twas like all instruments, 
 
 Now like a lonely flute; 
 
 And now it is an angel's song, 
 
 Which makes the heavens be mute.' 
 
 ' ' When the tale has reached the height of mystery and 
 emotion, a change ensues; gradually the greater spell is 
 removed, the spirits depart, the strain softens — with a 
 weird yet gentle progress the ship comes ' slowly and 
 smoothly, ' without a breeze, back to the known and 
 visible. As the voyage approaches its conclusion, ordi- 
 nary instrumentalities appear once more. There is first 
 the rising of the soft familiar wind, ' like a meadow gale 
 in spring, ' then the blessed vision of the lighthouse-top, 
 the hill, the kirk, all those well-known realities which 
 gradually relieve the absorbed excitement of the listener, 
 and favor his slow return to ordinary daylight. And then 
 comes the ineffable half-childish, half-divine simplicity of 
 those soft moralizings at the end, so strangely different 
 from the tenor of the tale, so wonderfully perfecting its 
 visionary strain. After all, the poet seems to say, after 
 this weird excursion into the very deepest, awful heart of 
 the seas and mysteries, here is your child's moral, a tender 
 little half-trivial sentiment, yet profound as the blue 
 depths of heaven : — 
 
 " ' He prayeth best, who loveth best 
 All things both great and small; 
 For the dear God who loveth us. 
 He made and loveth all.' 
 
 " This unexpected gentle conclusion brings our feet 
 back to the common soil with a bewildered sweetness of 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 83 
 
 relief and soft quiet after the prodigious strain of mental 
 excitement which is like nothing else we can remember in 
 poetry. The effect is one rarely produced, and which few 
 poets have the strength and daring to accomplish, sinking 
 from the highest notes of spiritual music to the absolute 
 simplicity of exhausted nature. Thus we are set down 
 on the soft grass, in a tender bewilderment, out of the 
 clouds. The visionary vo}age is over, we are back again 
 on the mortal soil from which we started; but never more, 
 never again, can the visible and invisible bear to us the 
 same meaning. For once in our lives, if never before, we 
 have passed the borders of the unseen. ' ' * 
 
 The interpretative character of music involves more 
 difficulty than that of poetry or painting, because of the 
 very identity of expression and content which is more 
 nearly attained here than in any other art. Pater recog- 
 nizes this : 
 
 " It is the art of music which most completely realizes 
 this artistic ideal, this perfect identification of form and 
 matter. In its ideal, consummate moments, the end is 
 not distinct from the means, the form from the matter, 
 the subject from the expression; they inhere in and com- 
 pletely saturate each other. ' ' f 
 
 For this reason the exposition of music through the 
 medium of words is more difficult and less satisfactory 
 than that of any other art. We sometimes feel that it is 
 impossible to interpret music at all except by playing it. 
 Certain classes of music do indeed lend themselves more 
 readily to verbal interpretation by virtue of a pictorial 
 quality in them. Thus Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony 
 
 * Mrs. Oliphant : Literary History of England, Vol. I, pp. 
 296-301. 
 
 f Pater: The Renaissance ; The School of Giorgione. 
 
84 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 (the Sixth) is suggestive of country scenes, and these sug- 
 gestions may be followed out by the listener; Raff's 
 Leonore Suite is similarly suggestive of incidents as well 
 as scenes; Schubert's Erlkdnig is made yet more explicit 
 by the words that accompany it. But though much 
 music is visually suggestive, its characteristic appeal is not 
 visual, and music embodies not scenes, nor incidents, 
 but — so far as it embodies an)'thing — moods; it is more 
 nearly than any other art a direct expression of human 
 will or human emotion. And what gives greatness to 
 Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony is not that it imitates 
 bird-notes and a rain-storm somewhat successfully, but 
 that it expresses the mood of a person amid such sur- 
 roundings, a distinction upon which Beethoven himseli 
 expressly insisted; the greatness of Schubert's Erlkdnig is 
 in its embodiment of the moods of father and child; while 
 most music-lovers will agree that Beethoven's Leonore 
 overtures are greater than Raff's suite partly because they 
 have not descended to the mere imitation of the externals 
 in the situations, the departing soldiers, the return, the 
 midnight ride, etc. , but have seized and expressed the 
 central moods of the situation. The feeling that music 
 can express mood, or will, so much more directly than any 
 other medium, is apt to be accompanied by a sense of the 
 futility of trying to interpret it by any other means than 
 its own. It was for this reason that Schopenhauer set it 
 apart from the other arts, as being " the copy of the will 
 itself," and this thought underli-es Browning's Abt Vogler: 
 
 " All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my 
 
 soul 
 All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly 
 
 forth. . . 
 But this is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can 
 Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, lo, they are !" 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 85 
 
 But the same poem, nevertheless, uses every means possi- 
 ble to words, in portraying the music Abt Vogler is playing. 
 First visual images are used — it is likened to a beautiful 
 building, upreared by the slaves of his magic power, there 
 is a suggestion of swift movement and of flashing light; 
 then strange visions of earth and air are conjured up; then 
 the spiritual "atmosphere" with its unearthly intense 
 serenity; and the whole poem is an exposition of the 
 effect upon the musician himself. 
 
 By such means as these it is possible to interpret even 
 music. We may resort to such visual images as are sug- 
 gested by it, or we may try to catch its ' ' mood " ; its 
 spiritual tone; we may frankly record its effect upon us, 
 or we may try through more direct sensuous descriptions 
 of the music, its pitch, quality, rhythm, to make clear its 
 significance. Any of these means are legitimate so long 
 as their value is not overestimated. The danger is that 
 we may, for example, come to think of music as only a 
 translation of a picture, from which the retranslation can 
 be easily made, — that after comparing Schumann's In der 
 Nacht to the moon in the clouds, we may deem his work 
 a music-picture of the moon in the clouds, instead of 
 recognizing that our pictured scene only symbolizes cer- 
 tain alternations of struggle and peace which are also 
 expressed, and more perfectly, in the music. 
 
 The following passage, visual though its appeal directly 
 is, is quite free from such error: 
 
 " Schumann's In der Nacht used to summon up before 
 my imagination the picture of the moon struggling 
 through the clouds on a windy night — emerging and dis- 
 appearing by turns; then for a while reigning ' apparent 
 queen ' amid white fleecy clouds, which are not sufficient 
 to intercept its light. During two moments even this 
 
86 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 silken veil is withdrawn, only to be succeeded by a bank 
 of black clouds, for a long time impenetrable, at last 
 penetrated at intervals a little more irregular and with a 
 brightness a little wilder and more meteoric than before; 
 finally, the light is put out and quenched by the storm. 
 
 " I learnt some years afterward that Schumann also 
 associated this piece with a picture, the idea of which 
 occurred to him after he had written the entire set of 
 Fantasiestiicke to which it belongs. It was a picture por- 
 traying the story of Hero and Leander; his picture is not 
 incompatible with mine. In his the clouds correspond to 
 the waves, the moon to a swimmer, buried and stifled in 
 their troughs or flashing and calling from their crests. 
 Where the moon triumphs in my story, in his there is a 
 love-scene on the shore, accompanied by the distan- 
 rippling of the waves; it seems almost as though 
 
 " ' The billows of cloud that around thee roll 
 Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day.' 
 
 But, no; there comes the plunge back into waves blacker 
 than before, tossing to and fro— cries from the swimmer 
 and from the shore — and, finally, ' night wraps up every- 
 thing. ' The music can be rendered after the manner of 
 Max Miiller either into a lunar myth or into a Greek 
 legend. What the moon does, and what the Greek hero 
 did in the story, are to a great extent the same; and 
 music interprets that important element or attribute which 
 is common to both. " * 
 
 One more example, from Amiel, may be given space : 
 " His quartett [Mozart, D minor] describes a day in 
 one of those Attic souls who prefigure on earth the 
 serenity of Elysium. The first scene is a pleasant conver- 
 
 * Bosanquet: History of Esthetic, Appendix II. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 87 
 
 sation, like that of Socrates on the banks of the Ilissus; 
 its chief mark is an exquisite urbanity. The second scene 
 is deeply pathetic. A cloud has risen in the blue of this 
 Greek heaven. A storm such as life inevitably brings 
 with it . . . has come to trouble the original harmony. 
 The andante is a scene of reproach and complaint, but as 
 between immortals. What loftiness in complaint, what 
 dignity, what feeling, what noble sweetness in reproach ! 
 The voice trembles and grows graver, but remains affec- 
 tionate and dignified. Then, — the storm has passed, the 
 sun has come back, the explanation has taken place, peace 
 is re-established. The third scene paints the brightness 
 of reconciliation. Love, in its restored confidence, and 
 as though in sly self-testing, permits itself even gentle 
 mocking and friendly badinage. And the finale brings us 
 back to that tempered gaiety and happy serenity, that 
 supreme freedom, flower of the inner life, which is the 
 leading motive of the whole composition. 
 
 " In Beethoven's, [C major quartett] on the other 
 hand, a spirit of tragic irony paints for you the mad 
 tumult of existence as it dances forever above the threaten- 
 ing abyss of the infinite. No more unity, no more satis- 
 faction, no more serenity. . . . Life triumphs at last, but 
 the victory is not final, and through all the intoxication 
 of it there is a certain note of terror and bewilderment."* 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 1. Describe a sleeping-room or study. 
 
 2. Describe the same room so as to bring out the char- 
 acter of its occupant. 
 
 You are asked by common friends to visit a Freshman. 
 
 * Amiel: Journal, 17 December, 1856. 
 
88 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 You call, he is out, but you have a moment to look at 
 his room and get an impression of his character, etc. 
 
 3. Turn to Lesson VI, 10 (10); rewrite the descrip- 
 tion to make it interpretative of the occupant's character. 
 
 4. Describe a kitchen, to show the character of the 
 cook; or a workshop or a student's " den," to show the 
 owner's character. 
 
 5. Describe a boy's or girl's desk, book-shelves, tool- 
 box, lead pencils, to characterize the owner. 
 
 6. Describe a sitting-room, as indicative of the family 
 traits; a nursery; a hat-rack; a row of the family's old 
 shoes; a pictures in the parlor. 
 
 7. Describe a church so as to characterize its congrega- 
 tion; a country store so as to suggest the traits of the 
 community. 
 
 8. " The rain was still falling, sweeping down from the 
 half-seen hills, wreathing the wooded peaks with a gray 
 garment of mist, and filling the valley with a whitish 
 cloud. 
 
 ' ' It fell around the house drearily. It ran down into 
 the tubs placed to catch it, dripped from the mossy pump, 
 and drummed on the upturned milk-pails, and upon the 
 brown and yellow beehives under the maple-trees. The 
 chickens seemed depressed, but the irrepressible bluejay 
 screamed amid it all, with the same insolent spirit, his 
 plumage untarnished by the wet. The barnyard showed 
 a horrible mixture of mud and mire, through which 
 Howard caught glimpses of the men, slumping to and fro 
 without more additional protection than a ragged coat 
 and a shapeless felt hat. 
 
 ' ' In the sitting-room where his mother sat sewing there 
 was not an ornament, save the etching he had brought. 
 The clock stood on a small shelf, its dial so much defaced 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS REL/ITION TO EXPOSITION. 89 
 
 that one could not tell the time of day; and when it 
 struck, it was with noticeably disproportionate delibera- 
 tion, as if it wished to correct any mistake into which the 
 family might have fallen by reason of its illegible dial. 
 
 " The paper on the walls showed the first concession of 
 the Puritans to the Spirit of Beauty, and was made up of 
 a heterogeneous mixture o( flowers of unheard-of shapes 
 and colors, arranged in foui different ways along the wall. 
 There were no books, no music, and only a few news- 
 papers in sight — a bare, blank, cold, drab-colored shelter 
 from the rain, not a home. Nothing cozy, nothing 
 heart-warming; a grim and horrible shed." * 
 
 How is the second paragraph unified in its appeal to 
 the senses as well as to the thought ? 
 
 From the whole description construct the character of 
 the family, or that of the member whose influence was 
 dominant in it. Trace the source of your impressions. 
 
 9. From the following account of his room what idea 
 do you get of Sebastian himself ? Note the main elements 
 in your impression, and trace their source in the descrip- 
 tion. If you wish to test your own interpretation further, 
 read the rest of the " portrait." 
 
 " His preference in the matter of art was, therefore, for 
 those prospects a vold'oiseau — of the caged bird on the 
 wing at last — of which Rubens had the secret, and still 
 more Philip de Koninck, four of whose choicest works 
 occupied the four walls of his chamber; visionary escapes, 
 north, south, east, and west, into a wide-open, though, 
 it must be confessed, a somewhat sullen land. For the 
 fourth of them he had exchanged with his mother a 
 marvel ously vivid Metsu, lately bequeathed to him, in 
 
 * Hamlin Garland: Main Travelled Roads. 
 
9° A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 which she herself was presented. They were the sole 
 ornaments he permitted himself. From the midst of the 
 busy and busy-looking house, crowded with the furniture 
 and pretty little toys of many generations, a long passage 
 led the rare visitor up a winding staircase, and (again at 
 the end of a long passage) he found himself as if shut off 
 from the whole talkative Dutch world, and in the embrace 
 of that wonderful quiet which is also possible in Holland 
 at its height all around him. It was here that Sebastian 
 could yield himself, with the only sort of love he had ever 
 felt, to the supremacy of his difficult thoughts. A kind 
 of empty place! Here, you felt, all had been mentally 
 put to rights by the working out of a long equation, 
 which had zero is equal to zero for its result. Here one 
 did, and perhaps felt, nothing; one only thought. Of 
 living creatures only birds came there freely, and sea-birds 
 especially, to attract and detain which there were all sorts 
 of ingenious contrivances about the windows, such as one 
 may see in the cottage scenery of Jan Steen and others. ' " * 
 
 LESSON IX. 
 
 Analyze the devices used in the three following pas- 
 sages, for showing character. Compare the quality of the 
 final impression of character with that gained from 
 Carlyle's descriptions (pp. 59-61). Account for the 
 difference. 
 
 I. '■ Mr. Serjeant Snubbin was a lantern-faced, sallow- 
 complexioned man, of about five-and-forty, or — as the 
 novels say — he might be fifty. He had that dull-looking 
 boiled eye which is so often to be seen in the heads of 
 people who have applied themselves during many years to 
 
 * Pater: Imaginary Portraits ; Sebastian van Storck. 
 
DESCRIPTION m ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 91 
 
 a weary and laborious course of study; and which would 
 have been sufficient, without the additional eye-glass 
 which dangled from a broad black riband round his neck, 
 to warn a stranger that he was very near-sighted. His 
 hair was thin and weak, which was partly attributable to 
 his having never devoted much time to its arrangement, 
 and partly to his having worn for five-and-twenty years the 
 forensic wig which hung on a block beside him. The 
 marks of hair-powder on his coat-collar, and the ill-washed 
 and worse-tied white neckerchief round his throat, showed 
 that he had not found leisure since he left the court to 
 make any alteration in his dress: while the slovenly style 
 of the remainder of his costume warranted the inference 
 that his personal appearance would not have been very 
 much improved if he had. Books of practice, heaps of 
 papers, and open letters were scattered over the table, 
 without any attempt at order or arrangement; the furni- 
 ture of the room was old and rickety; the doors of the 
 bookcase were rotting in their hinges; the dust flew out 
 from the carpet in little clouds at every step; the blinds 
 were yellow with age and dirt; and the state of everything 
 in the room showed, with a clearness not to be mistaken, 
 that Mr. Serjeant Snubbin was far too much occupied 
 with his professional pursuits to take any great heed or 
 regard of his personal comforts. ' ' * 
 
 2. " Perhaps there never was a more moral man than 
 Mr. Pecksniff, especially in his conversation and corre- 
 spondence. It was once said of him by a homely admirer, 
 that he had a Fortunatus' purse of good sentiments in his 
 inside. In this particular he was like the girl in the fairy 
 tale, except that if they were not actual diamonds which 
 
 * Dickens: Tie Pickwick Papers, Vol. II, Chap. III. 
 
92 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY MERITING. 
 
 fell from his lips, they were the very brightest paste that 
 shone prodigiously. He was a most exemplary man; 
 fuller of virtuous.precept than a copy-book. Some people 
 likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling 
 the way to a place, and never goes there, but these were 
 his enemies, the shadows cast by his brightness; that was 
 all. His very throat was moral. You saw a good deal 
 of it. You looked over a very low fence of white cravat 
 (whereof no man had ever beheld the tie, for he fastened 
 it behind), and there it lay, a valley between two jutting 
 heights of collar, serene and whiskerless before you. It 
 seemed to say, on the part of Mr. Pecksniff, ' There is no 
 deception, ladies and gentlemen, all is peace, a holy calm 
 pervades me.' So did his hair, just grizzled with an iron 
 gray, which was all brushed off his forehead, and stood 
 bolt upright, or slightly drooped in kindred action with 
 his heavy eyelids. So did his person, which was sleek 
 though free from corpulency. So did his manner, which 
 was soft and oily. In a word, even his plain black suit, 
 and state of widower, and dangling double eye-glass, all 
 tended to the same purpose, and cried aloud, ' Behold the 
 moral Pecksniff!' " * 
 
 3. "The passenger [was] standing alone upon the 
 point of rock, a tall slender figure of a gentleman, habited 
 in black, with a sword by his side and a walking-cane 
 upon his wrist. As he so stood, he waved the cane to 
 Captain Crail by way of salutation, with something both 
 of grace and mockery that wrote the gesture deeply on my 
 mind. . . 
 
 " I was now near enough to see him, a very handsome 
 figure and countenance, swarthy, lean, long, with a quick, 
 
 * Dickens: Martin ChuzzUwit, Chap. II. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 93 
 
 alert, black look, as of one who was a fighter and accus- 
 tomed to command ; upon one cheek he had a mole, not 
 unbecoming; a large diamond sparkled on his hand; his 
 clothes, although of the one hue, were of a French and 
 foppish design; his ruffles, which he wore longer than 
 common, of exquisite lace; and I wondered the more to 
 see him in such a guise, when he was but newly landed 
 from a dirty smuggling lugger. ' ' * 
 
 4. " This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment; 
 insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of the 
 language in which the preacher spoke, might still have 
 been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. 
 Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and 
 emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human 
 heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by 
 its passage through the church-walls, Hester Prynne 
 listened with such intentness, and sympathized so in- 
 timately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning for 
 her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. 
 These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been 
 only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual 
 sense. Now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind 
 sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it 
 rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and 
 power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an 
 atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, 
 majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was forever 
 in it an essential character of plaintiveness. A loud or 
 low expression of anguish, — the whisper or the shriek, as 
 it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched 
 a sensibility in every bosom ! At times this deep strain of 
 
 * Stevenson : The Master of Ballantrae. 
 
94 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, 
 sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the 
 minister's voice grew high and commanding, — when it 
 gushed irrepressibly upward, — when it assumed its utmost 
 breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst 
 its way through the solid walls, and diffused itself in open 
 air, — still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the 
 purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What 
 was it .? the complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, 
 perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or 
 sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching its 
 sympathy or forgiveness, — at every moment, — in each 
 accent, — and never in vain! It was this profound and 
 continual undertone that gave the clergyman his most 
 appropriate power. " * 
 
 From this description reconstruct as much of the man's 
 character as you can. 
 
 5. " ' Angry r she repeated; 'angry with you, Clif- 
 ford ! ' 
 
 ' ' Her tone, as she uttered this exclamation, had a 
 plaintive and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, 
 yet without subduing a certain something which an obtuse 
 auditor might still have mistaken for asperity. It was as 
 if some transcendent musician should draw a soul-thrilling 
 sweetness out of a cracked instrument, which makes its 
 physical imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal 
 harmony. ' ' f 
 
 6. " None of the many sketches of Carlyle that have 
 been published since his death have brought out quite 
 distinctly enough the thing which struck me more forcibly 
 than all else, when in the actual presence of the man; 
 
 * Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, Chap. XIII. 
 f Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables, Chap. VII. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 95 
 
 namely, the peculiar quality and expression of his laugh. 
 It need hardly be said that there is a great deal in a laugh. 
 One of the most telling pieces of oratory that ever reached 
 my ears was Victor Hugo's vindication, at the Voltaire 
 Centenary in Paris, of the smile of Voltaire. Certainly 
 Carlyle's laugh was not like that smile, but it was some- 
 thing as inseparable from his personality, and as essential 
 to the account, when making up one's estimate of him. 
 It was as individually characteristic as his face or his 
 dress, or his way of talking or of writing. It seemed 
 indeed indispensable for the explanation of all of these. 
 I found in looking back upon my first interview with him 
 that all I had known of Carlyle through others, or through 
 his own books, for twenty-five years, had been utterly 
 defective, — had left out, in fact, the key to his whole 
 nature, — inasmuch as nobody had ever described to me 
 his laugh. . . 
 
 "After the most vehement tirade he would suddenly 
 pause, t'nrow his head back, and give as genuine and 
 kindly a laugh as I ever heard from a human being. It 
 was not the bitter laugh of the cynic, nor yet the big- 
 bodied laugh of the burly joker; least of all was it the thin 
 and rasping cackle of the dyspeptic satirist. But it was a 
 broad, honest, human laugh, which beginning in the brain, 
 took into its action the whole heart and diaphragm, and 
 instantly changed the worn face into something frank and 
 even winning, giving to it an expression that would have 
 won the confidence of any child. Nor did it convey the 
 impression of an exceptional thing that had occurred for 
 the first time that day, and might never happen again. 
 It rather produced the effect of something habitual ; of 
 being the channel, well worn for years, by which the over- 
 flow of a strong nature was discharged. It cleared the air 
 
96 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 like thunder, and left the atmosphere sweet. It seemed to 
 say to himself, if not to us, ' Do not let us take this too 
 seriously ; it is my way of putting things. What refuge is 
 there ior a man who looks below the surface in a world 
 like this, except to laugh now and then ? ' The laugh, in 
 short, revealed the humorist; if I said the genial humorist, 
 wearing a mask of grimness, I should hardly go too far 
 for the impression it left. At any rate it shifted the 
 ground, and transferred the whole matter to that realm 
 of thought where men play with things. The instant 
 Carlyle laughed, he seemed to take the counsel of his 
 old friend Emerson, and to write upon the lintels of his 
 doorway, ' Whim. ' " * 
 
 How does the characterization of other laughs help the 
 characterization of Carlyle' s ? Examine the meaning of 
 the words used in these characterizations; what is the 
 figure implied in "bitter," "big-bodied," "thin," 
 ' ' broad ? ' ' What is suggested by ' ' rasping cackle ' ' and 
 ' ' dyspeptic ? " Is it possible to describe a laugh except 
 by such suggestion ? Try. Describe, using any means 
 you find, the laughs of several of your friends, preferably 
 of people known to your classmates. Read your descrip- 
 tions to them for the test of recognition. 
 
 In the following descriptions of voices study the means 
 used, and note the resulting impression. Notice, too, 
 how the comparison is always with something very 
 familiar. Why ? Why cannot a thing be described " in 
 terms of itself ? ' ' 
 
 7. "Mrs. Waule [speaking of relatives who were her 
 social superiors] had happened to say this very morning 
 (not at all with a defiant air, but in a low, muffled, neutral 
 
 * Higginson: Atlantic Monthly, 48; 463-4. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 97 
 
 tone, as of a voice heard through cotton-wool) that she 
 did not wish ' to enjoy their good opinion.' " * 
 
 8. Turn to p. 60 and note especially the use made oi 
 Coleridge's voice, and on p. 132 that made by Hawthorne 
 of Clifford's. 
 
 9. ' ' There floated out a voice of the kind that in his 
 childhood he used to call 'creamy.' " f 
 
 ID. (i) " It was a thick voice — a muddy voice that 
 would have made you shudder — a voice like 
 something soft breaking in two. ' ' | 
 (2) "I heard," said the adjutant, in a voice like a 
 blunt saw going through a thick board — ' ' § 
 
 1 1. Write an exposition of character from dress, 
 (i) A classmate. 
 
 (2) A cook, the description being sent to a married 
 
 friend who has asked you to get her a servant. 
 
 (3) A store clerk, or applicant for the position. 
 
 (4) A public singer or speaker. 
 
 (5) An old lady. 
 
 (6J Mrs. M , when not dressed for company. 
 
 12. How do you recognize a friend's approach by his 
 step ? 
 
 13. Describe the voices of two people reading aloud. 
 
 14. Describe a bit of handwriting as revealing charac- 
 ter; first, of some one you know, then of a stranger (say 
 of an applicant for a situation as teacher). 
 
 LESSON X. 
 
 I. Compare and contrast the method in the following 
 passage, and the results, with those of Mr. Morley's 
 exposition which treats of the same man (p. 58). 
 
 * George Eliot: Middlemarch, Chap. XII. 
 f Rudyard Kipling: Thi Brushwood Boy. 
 X lb.: The Undertakers. § lb. 
 
98 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 " \Vc passed through a very small antechamber, where 
 the household utensils were neatly aiTanged, and from 
 that into a room where Jean Jacques was seated in an 
 overcoat and a white cap, busy copying music. He rose 
 with a smiling face, offered us chairs, and resumed his 
 work, at the same time taking a part in conversation. 
 He was thin and of middle height. One shoulder struck 
 me as rather higher than the other. . . . Otherwise he 
 was very well proportioned. He had a brown com- 
 plexion, some color on his cheek-bones, a good mouth, a 
 well-made nose, a rounded and lofty brow, and eyes full 
 of fire. The oblique lines falling from the nostrils to the 
 extremity of the lips, and marking a physiognomy, in his 
 case expressed great sensibility and something even pain- 
 ful. One observed in his face three or four of the charac- 
 teristics of melancholy — the deep receding eyes and the 
 elevation of the eyebrows; you saw profound sadness in 
 the wrinkles of the brow; a keen and even caustic gaiety 
 in a thousand little creases at the corners of the eyes, of 
 which the orbits entirely disappeared when he laughed." * 
 
 2. "A certain miniature, done in Malbone's most 
 perfect style, and representing a face worthy of no less 
 delicate a pencil. ... It is the likeness of a young man, 
 in a silken dressing-gown of an old fashion, the soft rich- 
 ness of which is well adapted to the countenance of 
 reverie, with its full, tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that 
 seem to indicate not so much capacity of thought as 
 gentle and voluptuous emotion." f 
 
 How much further can you carry the characterization ? 
 Develop, as far as you can, the good and the bad possi- 
 bilities of the character here suggested. 
 
 * Bernardin de St. Pierre: Lftter on Rousseau. 
 
 t Hawlhorne: The House of the Seven Gables, Chap. VI. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN -ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 99 
 
 3. "The notablest of all yom Notabilities, Daniel 
 Webster. He is a magnificent specimen; you might say 
 to all the world : This is your Yankee Englishman, such 
 limbs we make in Yankee land! As a logic-fencer, advo- 
 cate, or Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to 
 back him at first sight against all the extant world. The 
 tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like face; the 
 dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull 
 anthracite furnaces, needing only to be blown; the mastiff- 
 mouth, accurately closed — I have not traced as much 
 of silent Berserkir-rage, that I remember of in any other 
 man. " * 
 
 Sum up the total impression. How is it developed .? 
 What would be the effect if the description began with 
 ' ■ the tanned complexion, ' ' etc. 1 leaving out ' ' magnifi- 
 cent ' ' and its first development into detail ? 
 
 4. " Celia said, ' How very ugly Mr. Casaubon is! ' 
 
 " ' Celia! He is one of the most distinguished-looking 
 men I ever saw. He is remarkably like the portrait of 
 Locke. He has the same deep eye-sockets. ' 
 
 " ' Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on 
 them .? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, I dare say! When people of a certain sort 
 looked at him, ' said Dorothea, walking away a little. 
 
 " ' Mr. Casaubon is so sallow.' 
 
 " ' All the better. I suppose you admire a man with 
 the complexion of a cochon de lait. ' 
 
 "' It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at 
 human beings as if they were mere'y animals, with a 
 toilet, and never see the great soul in a man's face.' 
 
 * Carlyle: Letter to Emerson. 
 
loo A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 " ' Has Mr. Casaubon a great soul ? ' " * 
 Construct, as far as you are able from this conversation, 
 Mr. Casaubon's face. What is Celia's contribution to 
 your impression ? What Dorothea's .? Would either be 
 complete alone ? Was Celia necessarily seeing only super- 
 ficially ? 
 
 5. What is the suggestive value of Chaucer's statement 
 regarding the ' ' somnour ' ' ? — 
 
 " Of his visage children were afeard." f 
 
 6. Describe a face from a photograph, giving its more 
 immediate appeal to the eye. 
 
 Give an interpretative description of the same face. 
 
 7. Describe a face : 
 
 (i) By the first general impression; 
 
 (2) By the effect on others (e.g., on men, on women, 
 
 on children, on timid or self-confident people, 
 
 on beggars or tramps.) 
 
 8. Emphasize the interpretative element in 7 so as to 
 bring out the character further. 
 
 9. Interpret a face as its expression changes — from a 
 smiling to a sad aspect, or to a frown, etc. 
 
 10. Expound a face which appears to embody a con- 
 tradiction, so as to bring out clearly the significance of the 
 contradictory elements, and, if possible, to reconcile 
 them; e.g., Huxley, William the Silent, Shakespeare. 
 
 11. Contrast the character seen in the faces of George 
 Eliot (profile) and Savonarola. 
 
 12. Describe to some one, in order to find out her 
 name: 
 
 (i) The prettiest girl in the class. 
 
 * George Eliot: Middlimarch, Chap. II. 
 
 f Chaucer: Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 1. 62S, 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS REL/1TION TO EXPOSITION, loi 
 
 (z) The most "distinguished-looking" girl in the 
 class. 
 
 (3) The cleverest-looking girl in the class. 
 
 (4) The happiest -looking girl in the class. 
 
 (5) The most conceited-looking girl in the class. 
 
 13. Criticize the following description of a face, and, if 
 possible, reconstruct it on lines in closer conformity to the 
 laws of perception. 
 
 "To begin, then, Muriel was tall, with a slight, erect 
 figure, a quick step, and an air of youth and vigor which 
 did the beholder good to look at. Her face was oval, as 
 nearly oval at least as a face can be, in which the chin is 
 a good deal more pronounced than is usual in classic 
 beauties. The cheeks were pale, paler than they had any 
 business to be, judging from the rest of the physique; the 
 most noticeable fact in point of coloring being that the 
 eyes, hair, brows, and lashes were all of the same, or 
 pretty nearly the same color — a deep, dark brown, inclin- 
 ing to chestnut above the temples, from which the hair 
 was brushed courageously back, so as to form a small 
 knot at the back of the head. Her eyes — not, perhaps, 
 by the way, a strikingly original trait in a heroine — were 
 large and bright; indeed, brighter or pleasanter eyes have 
 seldom looked out of a woman's face, their beauty con- 
 sisting less in their size and color than in this very vivid- 
 ness and brightness which seemed to shine out of the 
 irises themselves. For all that, the face in repose was not 
 exactly a bright one, or rather the brightness came to it 
 only by fits and starts, its prevailing expression being a 
 somewhat sober one; a sobriety giving way, however, at a 
 touch, and being replaced by a peculiarly sunshiny smile 
 and glance." * 
 
 * Quoted by Mr. Arlo Bates in his Talks on Writing Eng' 
 lish, p. 195. 
 
102 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY JVRITING. 
 
 14. What is the suggestive value of the following 
 catalogue ? Expand to a character sketch the suggestion 
 contained in it. [My landlady's daughter] " Aet. 19 +. 
 Tender-e)'ed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold 
 pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. 
 Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, 
 and Sylvanus Cobb, Junior, while her mother makes the 
 puddings. Says ' Yes ^ ' when you tell her anything." '■■ 
 
 15. What impression of Clara do you get from the fol- 
 lowing passage ."' Give your own interpretation of Mrs. 
 Mountstuart's phrase. 
 
 Clara Middleton was pronounced by Mrs. Mount- 
 stuart Jenkinson to be "a dainty rogue in porcelain." 
 Sir Willoughby, Miss Middleton's fiance, was displeased. 
 
 " ' Why rogue 'i ' he insisted with Mrs. Mountstuart. 
 
 " ' I said — in porcelain,' she replied. 
 
 " ' Rogue perplexes me.' 
 
 " ' Porcelain explains it.' 
 
 ' ' ' She has the keenest sense of honor. ' 
 
 " ' I am sure she is a paragon of rectitude.' 
 
 " ' She has a beautiful bearing.' 
 
 " ' The carriage of a young princess.' 
 
 " ' I find her perfect. ' 
 
 ' ' ' And still she may be a dainty rogue in porcelain. ' 
 
 "'Are you judging by the mind or the person, 
 ma'am ? ' 
 
 "'Both.' 
 
 " ' And which is which ? ' 
 
 " ' There is no distinction.' " f 
 
 16. What impression is conveyed by the following 
 description of Mr. Harum 1 
 
 * Holmes: T/ie Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, I. 
 f George Meredith; The Egoist, Chap. V. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION 103 
 
 "Rather under the middle height, he was broad- 
 shouldered and deep-chested, with a clean-shaven, red 
 face, with — not a mole — but a slight protuberance the size 
 of half a large pea on the line from the nostril to the 
 corner of the mouth; bald over the crown and to a line a 
 couple of inches above the ear, below that thick and 
 somewhat bushy hair of yellowish red, showing a mingling 
 of gray; small but very blue eyes; a thick nose, of no 
 classifiable shape, and a large mouth with the lips so 
 pressed together as to produce a slightly downward and 
 yet rather humorous curve at the corners. He was 
 dressed in a sack coat of dark ' pepper and salt, ' with 
 waistcoat and trousers to match. A somewhat old- 
 fashioned standing collar, flaring away from the throat, 
 was encircled by a red cravat, tied in a bow under his 
 chin. A diamond stud of perhaps two carats showed in 
 the triangle of spotless shirt front, and on his head was a 
 cloth cap with ear lappets. He accosted our friend with, 
 ' I reckon you must be Mr. Lennox. How are you ? 
 I'm glad to see you,' tugging off a thick buckskin glove, 
 and putting out a plump fcut muscular hand." * 
 
 LESSON XI. 
 
 In the following passages, discover the personality in- 
 volved in the activities described, and note the sources of 
 your impression. 
 
 I. " A little old woman was the owner of the voice. 
 In a fourth-story room of the red and black tenement she 
 was trudging on a journey. In her arms she bore pots 
 and pans, and sometimes a broom and dust-pan. She 
 wielded them like weapons. Their weight seemed to have 
 
 * Edward Noyes Westcott: David Barum, pp. iig-120. 
 
I04 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY (VRITING. 
 
 bended her back and crooked her arms until she walked 
 with difficulty. Often she plunged her hands into water 
 at a sink. She splashed about, the dwindled muscles 
 working to and fi"o under the loose skin of her arms. She 
 came from the sink, steaming and bedraggled as if she 
 had crossed a flooded river. 
 
 "There was the flurry of the battle in this room. 
 Through the clouded dust or steam one could see the 
 thin figure dealing mighty blows. Always her way seemed 
 beset. Her broom was constantly poised lance-wise at 
 dust demons. There came clashings and clangings as she 
 strove with her tireless foes. 
 
 " It was a picture of indomitable courage, and as she 
 went on her \\ay her voice was often raised in a long cry, 
 a strange war chant, a shout of battle and defiance that 
 rose and fell in harsh screams, and exasperated the ears of 
 the man with the red-mottled face. 
 
 " ' Should I be car-reed tew th' skies 
 O-on flow'ry be-eds of ee-ease. . . .' 
 
 " Finally she halted for a moment. Going to the 
 window she sat down and mopped her face with her apron. 
 It was a lull, a moment of respite. Still it could be seen 
 that she even then was planning skirmishes, charges, 
 campaigns. She gazed thoughtfully about the room and 
 noted the strength and position of her enemies. She 
 was very alert. 
 
 "At last she turned to the mantel. 'Five o'clock,' 
 she murmured, scrutinizing a little, swaggering nickel- 
 plated clock. 
 
 ' ' Presently she sprang from her nest and began to buffet 
 with her shriveled arms. In a moment the battle was 
 again in full swmg. Terrific blows were given and 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 105 
 
 received. There arose the clattering uproar of a new 
 fight. The little intent warrior never hesitated or faltered. 
 She fought with a strong and relentless will. Beads and 
 lines of perspiration stood upon her forehead. 
 
 " Three blue plates were leaning in a row on the shelf 
 back of the stove. The little old woman had seen it done 
 somewhere. In front of them swaggered the round 
 nickel-plated clock. Her son had stuck many cigarette 
 pictures in the rim of a looking-glass that hung near. 
 Occasional chromos were tacked upon the yellow walls 
 of the room. There was one in a gilt frame. It was 
 quite an affair in reds and greens. They all seemed like 
 trophies. 
 
 ' ' The little old woman looked at the clock again. 
 'Quarter a six.' 
 
 " She had paused for a moment, but she now hurled 
 herself fiercely at the stove that lurked in the gloom, red- 
 eyed like a dragon. It hissed, and there was renewed 
 danger of blows. The little old woman dashed to and 
 fro. ' ' * 
 
 2. " The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen 
 there, busy upon doors and window-frames and wain- 
 scoting. A scent of pine wood from a tent-like pile of 
 planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent 
 of the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer 
 snow close to the open window opposite; the slanting 
 sunbeams shone through the transparent shavings that 
 flew before the steady plane, and lit up the fine grain of 
 the oak -paneling which stood propped against the wall. 
 On a heap of those soft shavings a rough gray shepherd 
 
 * Stephen Crane: George's Mother, Chap. II. 
 
io6 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 dog had made himself a pleasant bed and was lying with 
 his nose between his forepaws, occasionally wrinkling his 
 brows to cast a glance at the tallest of the five workmen, 
 who was carving a shield in the center of a wooden 
 mantelpiece. It was to this workman that the strong 
 baritone belonged which was heard above the sound of 
 plane and hammer, singing : 
 
 ' Awake, my soul, and with the sun 
 
 Thy daily stage of duty run; 
 
 Shake off dull sloth. . . .' 
 
 Here some measurement was to be taken which required 
 more concentrated attention, and the sonorous voice sub- 
 sided into a low whistle; but it presently broke out again 
 with renewed vigor, 
 
 ' Let all thy converse be sincere, 
 Thy conscience as the noonday clear.' 
 
 Such a voice could only come from a broad chest and the 
 broad chest belonged to a large-boned, muscular man, 
 nearly six feet high, with a back so flat and a head so 
 well poised that when he drew himself up to take a more 
 distant survey of his work he had the air of a soldier 
 standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow 
 showed an arm that was likely to win a prize for feats of 
 strength ; yet the long, supple hand with its broad finger- 
 tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwart- 
 ness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name; but 
 the jet-black hair, made the more noticeable by its con- 
 trast with the light paper cap, and the keen glance of the 
 dark eyes that shone from under strongly marked, promi- 
 nent, and mobile eyebrows, indicated a mixture of Celtic 
 blood. The face was large and roughly hewn, and when 
 in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an 
 expression of good-humored, honest intelligence. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 107 
 
 "It is clear at a glance that the next workman is 
 Adam's brother. He is nearly as tall; he has the same 
 type of features, the same hue of hair and complexion; 
 but the strength of the family likeness seems only to 
 render more conspicuous the remarkable difference of 
 expression both in form and face. Seth's broad shoulders 
 have a slight stoop; his eyes are gray; his eyebrows have 
 less prominence and more repose than his brother's and 
 his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and benig- 
 nant. He has thrown off his paper cap, and you see that 
 his hair is not thick and straight, like Adam's, but thin 
 and wavy, allowing you to discern the exact contour of a 
 coronal arch that predominates very decidedly over the 
 brow. 
 
 ' ' The idle tramps have always felt sure they could get 
 a copper from Seth ; they scarcely ever spoke to Adam. 
 
 ' ' All hands worked on in silence for some minutes 
 until the church clock began to strike six. Before the first 
 stroke had died away, Sandy Jim had loosed his plane, 
 and was reaching his jacket; Wiry Ben had left a screw 
 half driven in, and thrown his screw-driver into his tool- 
 basket; Mum Taft, who, true to his name, had kept 
 silence throughout the previous conversation, had flung 
 down his hammer as he was in the act of lifting it; and 
 Seth, too, had straightened his back, and was putting out 
 his hand toward his paper cap. Adam alone had gone on 
 with his work as if nothing had happened. But observing 
 the cessation of tools he looked up and said, in a tone of 
 indignation, ' Look there, now! I can't abide to see men 
 throw away their tools in that way the minute the clock 
 begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure in their work 
 and was afraid o' doing a stroke too much. ' 
 
io8 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 ' ' Seth looked a little conscious, and began to be slower 
 in his preparations for going, but Mum Taft broke silence 
 and said, ' Ay, ay, Adam, lad, ye talk like a young un. 
 When you are six an' forty like me, instid o' six an' 
 twenty, ye nonna be so flush o' working for naught. ' 
 
 "'Nonsense,' said Adam, still wrathful, 'what's age 
 got to do with it, I wonder ? Ye arena getting stiff yet, 
 I reckon. I hate to see a man's arms drop down as if 
 he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as if he'd 
 never a bit o' pride and delight in 's work. The very 
 grindstone 'ull go on turning a bit after you loose it.' " * 
 
 4. " ' Sir Humphry Davy .? ' said Mr. Brooke, over the 
 soup, in his easy smiling way, taking up Sir James 
 Chetham's remark that he was studying Davy's Agricul- 
 tural Chemistry. 'Well, now, Sir Humphry Davy: I 
 dined with him years ago at Cart Wright's, and Wordsworth 
 was there too — the poet Wordsworth, you know. Now 
 there was something singular. I was at Cambridge when 
 Wordsworth was there and I never met him — and I dined 
 with him twenty years afterward at Cartwright's. There 's 
 an oddity in things now. But Davy was there; he was a 
 poet, too. Or, as I may say, Wordsworth was poet one 
 and Davy was poet two. That was true in every sense 
 you know. ' 
 
 " ' I am reading the Agricultural Chemistry,' said this 
 excellent baron, ' because I am going to take one of the 
 farms into my own hands, and see if something cannot be 
 done in setting a good pattern of farming among my 
 tenants. Do you approve of that. Miss Brooke .? ' 
 
 " ' A great mistake, Chetham ! ' interposed Mr. Brooke, 
 
 * George Eliot: Adam Bedi, Chap. I. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 109 
 
 ' going into electrifying your land and making a parlor of 
 your cow-house. It won't do. I went into science a 
 great deal myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. 
 It leads to everything; you can let nothing alone. No, 
 no — see that your tenants don't sell their straw, and that 
 kind of thing; and give them draining-tiles, you know. 
 But your fancy farming will not do — the most expensive 
 sort of whistle you can buy! You may as well keep a 
 pack of hounds. ' 
 
 ' ' ' Surely, ' said Dorothea, ' it is better to spend money 
 in finding out how men can make the most of the land 
 which supports them all than in keeping dogs and horses 
 only to gallop over it. It is not a sin to make yourself 
 poor in performing experiments for the good of all.' 
 
 "'Young ladies don't understand political economy, 
 you know, ' said Mr. Brooke, smiling toward Mr. Casau- 
 bon. ' I remember when we were all reading Adam 
 Smith. T/iere is a book, now. I took in all the new 
 ideas at one time — human perfectibility, now. But some 
 say, history moves in circles ; and that may be very well 
 argued; I have argued it myself. The fact is human 
 reason may carry you a little too far — over the hedge, in 
 fact. It carried me a good way at one time; but I saw 
 it would not do. I pulled up; I pulled up in time. But 
 not too hard. I have always been in favor of a little 
 theory; we must have thought; else we shall be landed 
 in the Dark Ages. But talking of books, there is 
 Southey's Peninsular War. I am reading that of a morn- 
 ing. You know Southey ? ' 
 
 "'No,' said Mr. Casaubon, not keeping pace with 
 Mr. Brooke's impetuous reason, and thinking of the book 
 only. ' I have little leisure for such literature just now. 
 
no A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 I have been using up my eyesight on old characters lately; 
 the fact is I want a reader for my evenings; but I am 
 fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure listening to an 
 imperfect reader. It is a misfortune in some senses; I 
 feed too much on the inward sources; I live too much 
 with the dead. My mind is something like the ghost 
 of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying 
 mentally to- construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin 
 and confusing changes. But I find it necessary to use the 
 utmost caution about my eyesight. ' " * 
 
 5. "Supper was announced. The move began; and 
 Miss Bates might be heard from that moment without 
 interruption, till her being seated at the table and taking 
 up her spoon. 
 
 ' ' ' Jane, Jane, my dear Jane, where are you ? Here is 
 your tippet. Mrs. Weston begs you to put on your 
 tippet. She says she is afi-aid there will be drafts in 
 the passage, though everything has been done — one dooi 
 nailed up — quantities of matting — my dear Jane, indeed 
 you must. Mr. Churchill, oh! you are too obliging! — 
 How well you put it on ! — so gratified ! Excellent danc- 
 ing indeed ! Yes, my dear, I ran home as I said I should 
 to help grandmamma to bed and got back again, and 
 nobody missed me. I set off without saying a word, just 
 as I told you. Grandmamma was quite well ; had a 
 charming evening with Mr. \\'oodhouse, a vast deal of 
 chat and backgammon. Tea was made down -stairs, 
 biscuits and baked ■ apples and nine before she came 
 away; amazing luck in some of her throws; and she 
 inquired a great deal about you. How you were amused, 
 and who were your partners. ' ' Oh ! ' ' said I, " I shall not 
 
 * George Eliot: Middhmarch, Chap. II. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 1 1 1 
 
 forestall Jane; I left her dancing with Mr. George Otnay; 
 she will love to tell you all about it herself to-morrow; 
 her first partner was Mr. Elton; I do not know who will 
 ask her next; perhaps Mr. William Cox." My dear sir, 
 you are too obliging. Is there no one else you would not 
 rather ? — I am not helpless. Sir, you are most kind. 
 Upon my word,. Jane on one arm, and me on the other ! 
 Stop, stop, let us stand a Uttle back, Mrs. Elton is going; 
 dear Mrs. Elton, how elegant she looks — beautiful lace! 
 — Now we all follow in her train. Quite the queen of 
 the evening! — Well, here we are at the passage. Two 
 steps, Jane, take care of the two steps. Oh ! no, there is 
 but one. Well, I was persuaded there were two. How 
 very odd! I was convinced there were two and here is 
 but one. I never saw anything equal to the comfort and 
 style — candles everywhere. I was telling you of your 
 grandmamma, Jane, — there was a little disappointment. 
 The baked apples and biscuits excellent in their way, you 
 know ; but there was a delicate fricassee of sweetbread and 
 some asparagus brought in at first; and good Mr. Wood- 
 house, not thinking the asparagus boiled enough, sent it 
 out again. Now there is nothing grandmamma loves 
 better than sweetbread and asparagus, so she was rather 
 disappointed; but we agreed we would not speak of it to 
 anybody, for fear of its getting around to dear Miss Wood- 
 house, who would be so very much concerned ! — Well, 
 this is brilliant ! I am all amazement ! — Could not have 
 supposed anything! — Such elegance and profusion! I 
 have seen nothing like it since — Well, where shall we sit ? 
 Anywhere, so that Jane is not in a draft. Where I sit is 
 of no consequence. Oh! do you recommend this side ? 
 Well, I am sure, Mr. Churchill— only it seems too good — 
 but just as you please; What you direct in this house 
 
112 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 cannot be wrong. Dear Jane, how shall we ever recollect 
 half the dishes for grandmamma! Soup, too! Bless me! 
 I should not be helped so soon, but it smells most excel- 
 lent and I cannot help beginning.' " * 
 
 6. Turn back to the conversation between Celia and 
 Dorothea quoted for another purpose on pp. 99-100, and 
 see what it tells you of the speakers' characters. 
 
 7. " The Old Maid was alone in the old house. . 
 Inaudible, consequently, were poor Miss Hepzibah's 
 gusty sighs. Inaudible the creaking joints of her stiffened 
 knees as she knelt down by the bedside. . . . The 
 maiden lady's devotions are concluded. Will she now 
 issue forth over the threshold of our story .? Not yet, by 
 many moments. First, every drawer in the tall, old- 
 fashioned bureau is to be opened, with difficulty, and with 
 a succession of spasmodic jerks; then, all must close 
 again, with the same fidgety reluctance. There is a rust- 
 ling of stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward foot- 
 steps to and fro across the chamber. We suspect Miss 
 Hepzibah, moreover, of taking a step upwards into a chair 
 in order to give heedful regard to her appearance on all 
 sides, and at full length, in the oval, dingy-framed toilet- 
 glass that hangs above her table. . . . 
 
 " A few more footsteps to and fro; and here, at last, — 
 with another pitiful sigh, like a gust of chill, damp wind 
 out of a long-closed vault, the door of which has acci- 
 dentally been set ajar, — here comes Miss Hepzibah 
 Pyncheon! Forth she steps into the dusky time-darkened 
 passage; a tall figure, clad in black silk, with a long and 
 shrunken waist, feeling her way toward the stairs like a 
 near-sighted person, as in truth she is. " f 
 
 * Jane Austen: Emma, Chap. X. 
 
 \ Hawthorne; The House of the Seven Gables, Chap. II. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 113 
 
 8. ' ' Rosamond and Mary had been talking faster than 
 their male friends. They did not think of sitting down, 
 but stood at the toilet-table near the window while 
 Rosamond took off her hat, adjusted her veil, and applied 
 little touches of her finger-tips to her hair- — hair of in- 
 fantine fairness, neither flaxen nor yellow. Mary Garth 
 seemed all the plainer standing at an angle between the 
 two nymphs — the one in the glass and the one out of it — ■ 
 who looked at each other with eyes of heavenly blue, deep 
 enough to hold the most exquisite meaning an ingenious 
 beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide 
 the meanings of the owner if these should happen to be 
 less exquisite. Only a few children in Middlemarch 
 looked blond by the side of Rosamond, and the thin 
 figure displayed by her riding-habit had delicate undula- 
 tions. In fact, most men in Middlemarch, except her 
 brothers, held that Miss Vincy was the best girl in the 
 world, and sometimes called her angel. Mary Garth, on 
 the contrary, had the aspect of an ordinary sinner; she 
 was brown; her curly dark hair was rough and stubborn; 
 her stature was low; . . . 
 
 When she and Rosamond happened to be reflected in the 
 glass, she said, laughingly, ' What a brown patch I am by 
 the side of you, Rosy! You are the most unbecoming 
 companion. ' 
 
 " ' Oh, no! No one thinks of your appearance, you 
 are so sensible and useful, Mary. Beauty is of very little 
 consequence in reality,' said Rosamond, turning her head 
 toward Mary, but with eyes swerving toward the new view 
 of her neck in the glass. 
 
 " ' You mean my beauty,' said Mary, rather sardon- 
 ically. 
 
114 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRJTING. 
 
 ' ' Rosamond thought, ' Poor Mary, she takes the 
 kindest things ill.' Aloud she said, 'What have you 
 been doing lately ? ' " * 
 
 9. Disclose the character of a business man by describ- 
 ing his treatment of an employee (e.g., an office boy or 
 a clerk); or that of a mistress, by the way she treats her 
 servants. Contrast, so as to bring out their characters, 
 the way in which two students enter a class-room when 
 they are late, or the behavior of two boys during a foot- 
 ball game; the way in which two servants sweep a room, 
 or wash dishes, or wait on the table. 
 
 10. Interpret the manner of a shop-clerk (man or 
 woman) or of a car-conductor. 
 
 1 1. Walk along a street and draw conclusions as to the 
 characters of your acquaintances from their salutations. 
 
 12. Make a stenographic report of an actual conversa- 
 tion, such as takes place at table or between classes, or 
 at a school recess, etc. (The report may be brief, but 
 should be exact, including abbreviations, slang, etc.) 
 
 An overheard street-car conversation will often be 
 available. 
 
 13. Report an actual conversation that seems to reveal 
 character. This should be accurate but may be selective. 
 
 14. Revise this report so as to bring out its significance 
 more clearly. Expand or alter the conversation some- 
 what, or change the situation, etc. 
 
 15. Take the work of a fellow-student and from the 
 conversation given construct so far as you can the char- 
 acters of the participants. Compare your results with 
 the writer's intentions, and if there is disagreement, seek 
 its causes. 
 
 * George Eliot; Middle-march, Chap. XII. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS REL/ITION TO EXPOSITION. nS 
 
 1 6. In response to the request of a friend write a char- 
 acterization of some one. Use any devices you find 
 fitting. 
 
 (i) A confidential report on a servant or a clerk. 
 
 (2) An account of a boy or a girl who is to be your 
 
 friend's room-mate next year. 
 
 (3) A characterization of the boy who is likely to be 
 
 made captain of the team or president of the 
 club. 
 
 (4) A sketch of some one who may be your friend's 
 
 companion in a trip abroad. 
 
 17. Write the first paragraphs of a story, which shall 
 sufficiently characterize the hero or heroine, or both. 
 
 LESSON XII. 
 
 Analyze carefully the various devices used in the follow- 
 ing passages to reveal character. Construct the charac- 
 ters where this is not fully done in the passage itself. 
 
 1. Condense the exposition of Elizabeth's character 
 into a single sentence. 
 
 Summarize her character somewhat at length, omitting 
 all Green's concrete instances and illustrations. What is 
 the difference in the vividness of the result .? Account for 
 this by referring it to the natural order of our experiences. 
 
 2. Analyze the paragraphs singly. Are they unified .' 
 What is the relation of each to the entire exposition .? 
 
 3. In the exposition, Green begins with her personal 
 appearance and ends with her policy towards the Church. 
 Give the most fundamental reason you can why this 
 course should be more effective than the reverse. Follow- 
 ing this line of reasoning, trace the main lines of appeal 
 throughout the body of the essay. 
 
 " Never had the fortunes of England sunk to a lower 
 
Ii6 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 ebb than at the moment when EHzabeth mounted the 
 throne. The country was humiUated by defeat and 
 brought to the verge of rebellion by the bloodshed and 
 misgovernment of Mary's reign. The old social discon- 
 tent, trampled down for a time by the mercenary troops 
 of Somerset, still remained a perpetual menace to public 
 order. The religious strife had passed beyond hope of 
 reconciliation, now that the Reformers were parted from 
 their opponents by the fires of Smithfield, and the party 
 of the New Learning all but dissolved. The Catholics 
 were bound helplessly to Rome. Protestantism, burnt at 
 home and hurled into exile abroad, had become a fiercer 
 thing; and was pouring back from Geneva with dreams 
 of revolutionary change in Church and State. England, 
 dragged at the heels of Philip into a useless and ruinous 
 war, was left without an ally save Spain; while France, 
 mistress of Calais, became mistress of the Channel. Not 
 only was Scotland a standing danger in the north, through 
 the French marriage of Mary Stuart and its consequent 
 bondage to French policy, but its Queen had assumed 
 the style and arms of an English sovereign, and threatened 
 to arouse every Catholic throughout the realm against 
 Elizabeth's title. In presence of this host of dangers the 
 country lay utterly helpless, without army or fleet, or the 
 means of manning one; for the treasury, already drained 
 by the waste of Edward's reign, had been utterly ex- 
 hausted by Mary's restoration of the Church-lands, and 
 by the cost of her war with France. 
 
 " England's one hope lay in the character of her 
 Queen. Elizabeth was now in her twenty-fifth year. 
 Personally she had much of her mothers beauty; her 
 figure was commanding, her face long, but queenly and 
 intelligent, her eyes quick and fine. She had grown up 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION, n? 
 
 amidst the liberal culture of Henry's court, a bold horse- 
 woman, a good shot, a graceful dancer, a skilled musician, 
 and an accomplished scholar. She read every morning 
 a portion of Demosthenes, and could ' rub up her rusty 
 Greek ' at need to bandy pedantry with a Vice-Chancellor. 
 But she was far from being a mere pedant. The new 
 literature which was springing up around her found 
 constant welcome in her Court. She spoke Italian and 
 French as fluently as her mother tongue. She was famil- 
 iar with Ariosto and Tasso. In spite of the affectation 
 of her style, and her taste for anagrams and puerilities, 
 she listened with delight to the ' Faery Queen, ' and 
 found a smile for ' Master Spenser ' when he appeared in 
 the Presence. Her moral temper recalled in its strange 
 contrasts the mixed blood within her veins. She was at 
 once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From 
 her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her 
 love of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, 
 her dauntless courage, and her amazing self-confidence. 
 Her harsh manlike voice, her impetuous will, her pride, 
 her furious outbursts of anger came to her with her Tudor 
 blood. She rated great nobles as if they were schoolboys; 
 she met the insolence of Essex with a box on the ear; she 
 would break, now and then, into the gravest deliberations 
 to swear at her ministers like a fishwife. But strangely in 
 contrast with the violent outlines of her Tudor temper 
 stood the sensuous, self-indulgent nature she derived from 
 Anne Boleyn. Splendor and pleasure were with Elizabeth 
 the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in 
 perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series 
 of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a 
 Caliph's dream. She loved gaiety and laughter and wit. 
 A happy retort or a finished compliment never failed to 
 
Ii8 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 win her favor. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were 
 innumerable. Her vanity remained, even to old age, the 
 vanity of a coquette in her teens. No adulation was too 
 fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too gross. ' To 
 see her was heaven, ' Hatton told her, ' the lack of her 
 was hell.' She would play with her rings that her court- 
 iers might note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a 
 coranto, that the French ambassador, hidden dexterously 
 behind a curtain, might report her sprightliness to his 
 master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her un- 
 womanly jests gave color to a thousand scandals. Her 
 character, in fact, like her portraits, was utterly without 
 shade. Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew 
 nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled the voluptuous 
 temper which had broken out in the romps of her girl- 
 hood, and showed itself almost ostentatiously throughout 
 her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a sure pass- 
 port to her liking. She patted handsome young squires 
 on the neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled 
 her ' sweet Robin, ' Lord Leicester, in the face of the Court. 
 ' ' It was no wonder that the statesmen whom she out- 
 witted held Elizabeth almost to the last to be little more 
 than a frivolous woman; or that Philip of Spain wondered 
 how ' a wanton ' could hold in check the policy of the 
 Escurial. But the Elizabeth whom they saw was far from 
 being all of Elizabeth. The willfulness of Henry, the 
 triviality of Anne Boleyn played over the surface of a 
 nature hard as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the 
 very type of reason untouched by imagination or passion. 
 Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, Elizabeth 
 lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her 
 vanity and caprice had no weight whatever with her in 
 State affairs. The coquette of the presence-chamber 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 119 
 
 became the coolest and hardest of politicians at the 
 council-board. Fresh from the flattery of her courtiers, 
 she would tolerate no flattery in the closet; she was her- 
 self plain and downright of speech with her counselors, 
 and she looked for a corresponding plainness of speech in 
 return. Her expenditure was parsimonious and even 
 miserly. If any trace of her sex lingered in her actual 
 statesmanship, it was seen in the simplicity and tenacity 
 of purpose that often underlies a woman's fluctuations of 
 feeling. It was this in part which gave her her marked 
 superiority over the statesmen of her time. No nobler 
 group of ministers ever gathered round a council-board 
 than those who gathered round the council-board of 
 Elizabeth. But she is the instrument of none. She 
 listens, she weighs, she uses or puts by the counsels of 
 each in turn, but her policy as a whole is her own. It 
 was a policy, not of genius, but of good sense. Her aims 
 were simple and obvious : to preserve her throne, to keep 
 England out of war, to restore civil and religious order. 
 Something of womanly caution and timidity, perhaps, 
 backed the passionless indifference with which she set 
 aside the larger schemes of ambition which were ever 
 opening before her eyes. She was resolute in her refusal 
 to the Low Countries. She rejected with a laugh the 
 offers of the Protestants to make her ' head of the Re- 
 ligion ' and ' mistress of the Seas.' But her amazing suc- 
 cess in the end sprang mainly from this wise limitation 
 of her aims. She had a finer sense than any of her 
 counselors of her real resources; she knew instinctively 
 how far she could go, and what she could do. Her cold, 
 critical intellect was never swayed by enthusiasm or by 
 panic either to exaggerate or to underestimate her risks or 
 her power. 
 
I20 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 " Of political wisdom, indeed, in its larger and more 
 generous sense, Elizabeth had little or none; but her po- 
 litical tact was unerring. She seldom saw her course at 
 a glance, but she played with a hundred courses, fitfully 
 and discursively, as a musician runs his fingers over the 
 keyboard, till she hit suddenly upon the right one. Such 
 a nature was essentially practical and of the present. She 
 distrusted a plan, in fact, just in proportion to its specu- 
 lative range or its outlook into the future. Her notion 
 of statesmanship lay in watching how things turned out 
 around her and in seizing the moment for making the 
 best of them. A policy of this limited, practical, tenta- 
 tive order was not only best suited to the England of her 
 day, to its small resources, and the transitional character 
 of its religious and political belief, but it was one emi- 
 nently suited to Elizabeth's peculiar powers. It was a 
 policy of detail, and in details her wonderful readiness 
 and ingenuity found scope for their exercise. ' No War, 
 my Lords, ' the Queen used to cry imperiously at the 
 council-board, ' No War! ' but her hatred of war sprang 
 less from aversion to blood or to expense, real as was her 
 aversion to both, than from the fact that peace left the 
 field open to the diplomatic manoeuvres and intrigues in 
 which she excelled. It was her delight in the conscious- 
 ness of her ingenuity which broke out in a thousand 
 puckish freaks, freaks in which one can hardly see any 
 purpose beyond the purpose of sheer mystification. She 
 reveled in ' byways ' and ' crooked ways. ' She played 
 with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and with 
 much of the same feline delight in the mere embarrass- 
 ment of her victims. When she was weary of mystifying 
 foreign statesmen she turned to find fresh sport in mystify- 
 ing her own ministers. Had Elizabeth written the story 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 121 
 
 of her reign she would have prided herself, not on the 
 triumph of England or the ruin of Spain, but on the skill 
 with which she had hoodwinked and outwitted every 
 statesman in Europe during fifty years. Nor was her 
 trickery without political value. Ignoble, inexpressibly 
 wearisome as the Queen's diplomacy seems to us now, 
 tracing it as we do through a thousand dispatches, it suc- 
 ceeded in its main end. It gained time, and every year 
 that was gained doubled Elizabeth's strength. Nothing 
 is more revolting in the Queen, but nothing is more char- 
 acteristic, than her shameless mendacity. It was an age 
 of political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness 
 of her lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom. 
 A falsehood was to her simply an intellectual means of 
 meeting a difficulty; and the ease with which she asserted 
 or denied whatever suited her purpose was only equaled 
 by the cynical indifference with which she met the ex- 
 posure of her lies as soon as their purpose was answered. 
 The same purely intellectual view of things showed itself 
 in the dexterous use she made of her very faults. Her 
 levity carried her gaily over moments of detection ■ and 
 embarrassment where better women would have died of 
 shame. She screened her tentative and hesitating states- 
 manship under the natural timidity and vacillation of her 
 sex. She turned her very luxury and sports to good 
 account. There were moments of grave danger in her 
 reign when the country remained indifferent to its perils, 
 as it saw the Queen give her days to hawking and hunt- 
 ing, and her nights to dancing and plays. Her vanity 
 and affectation, her womanly fickleness and caprice, all 
 had their part in the diplomatic comedies she played with 
 the successive candidates for her hand. If political ne- 
 cessities made her life a lonely one, she had at any rate 
 
122 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 the satisfaction of averting war and conspiracies by Icve 
 sonnets and romantic interviews, or of gaining a }ear of 
 tranquillity by the dexterous spinning out of a flirtation. 
 
 " As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes of 
 lying and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost 
 lost in a sense of contempt. But, wrapt as they were m 
 a cloud of mystery, the aims of her policy were through- 
 out temperate and simple, and they were pursued with a 
 singular tenacity. The sudden acts of energy which from 
 time to time broke her habitual hesitation proved that it 
 was no hesitation of weakness. Elizabeth could wait and 
 finesse; but when the hour was come she could strike, 
 and strike hard. Her natural temper, indeed, tended to 
 a rash self-confidence rather than to self-distrust. She 
 had, as strong natures always have, an unbounded con- 
 fidence in her luck. ' Her Majesty counts much on 
 Fortune,' Walsingham wrote bitterly; ' I wish she would 
 trust more in Almighty God. ' The diplomatists who 
 censured at one moment her irresolution, her delay, her 
 changes of front, censured at the next her ' obstinacy her 
 iron will, her defiance of what seemed to them inevitable 
 ruin. ' This woman,' Philip's envoy wrote after a wasted 
 remonstrance, — ' this woman is possessed by a hundred 
 thousand devils. ' To her own subjects, indeed, who 
 knew nothing of her manoeuvres and retreats, of her 
 ' byways ' and ' crooked ways, ' she seemed the embodi- 
 ment of dauntless resolution. Brave as they were, the 
 men who swept the Spanish main or glided between the 
 icebergs of Baffin's Bay never doubted that the palm of 
 bravery lay with their Queen. Her steadiness and courage 
 in the pursuit of her aims was equaled b}' the wisdom 
 with which she chose the men to accomplish them. She 
 had a quick eye for merit of any sort, and a wonderful 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 123 
 
 power of enlisting its whole energy in her service. None 
 of our sovereigns ever gathered such a group of advisers to 
 their council-board as gathered round the council-board 
 of Elizabeth, but the sagacity which chose Burleigh and 
 Walsingham was just as unerring in its choice of the 
 meanest of her agents. Her success, indeed, in securing 
 from the beginning of her reign to its end, with the single 
 exception of Leicester, precisely the right men for the 
 work she set them to do, sprang in great measure from 
 the noblest characteristic of her intellect. If in loftiness 
 of aim her temper fell below many of the tempers of her 
 time, in the breadth of its range, in the universality of its 
 sympathy it stood far above them all. Elizabeth could 
 talk poetry with Spenser and philosophy with Bruno; she 
 could discuss Euphuism with Lyly, and enjoy the chivalry 
 of Essex ; she could turn from talk of the last fashions to 
 pore with Cecil over dispatches and treasury books; she 
 could pass from tracking traitors with Walsingham to 
 settle points of doctrine with Parker, or to calculate with 
 Frobisher the chances of a northwest passage to the 
 Indies. The versatility and many-sidedness of her mind 
 enabled her to understand every phase of the intellectual 
 movement of her day, and to fix by a sort of instinct on 
 its higher representatives. But the greatness of the Queen 
 rests above all on her power over her people. We have 
 had grander and nobler rulers, but none so popular as 
 Elizabeth. The passion of love, of loyalty, of admiration 
 which finds its most perfect expression in the ' Faery 
 Queen,' throbbed as intensely through the veins of her 
 meanest subjects. To England, during her reign of half 
 a century, she was a virgin and a Protestant Queen; and 
 her immorality, her absolute want of religious enthusiasm, 
 failed utterly to blur the brightness of the national ideal. 
 
124 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 Her worst acts broke fruitlessly against the general devo- 
 tion. A Puritan, whose hand she hacked off in a freak 
 of tyrannous resentment, waved the stump round his head, 
 and shouted ' God save Queen Elizabeth. ' Of her faults, 
 indeed, England beyond the circle of her court knew little 
 or nothing. The shiftings of her diplomacy were never 
 seen outside the Royal closet. The nation at large could 
 only judge her foreign policy by its main outlines, by its 
 temperance and good sense, and, above all, by its success. 
 But every Englishman was able to judge Elizabeth in her 
 rule at home, in her love of peace, her instinct of order, 
 the firmness and moderation of her government, the 
 judicious spirit of conciliation and compromise among 
 warring factions, which gave the country an unexampled 
 tranquillity at a time when almost every other country in 
 Europe was torn with civil war. Every sign of the grow- 
 ing prosperity, the sight of London as it became the mart 
 of the world, of stately mansions as they rose on every 
 manor, told, and justly told, in Elizabeth's favor. In 
 one act of her civil administration she showed the bold- 
 n.ess and originality of a great ruler; for the opening of 
 her reign saw her face the social difficulty which had so 
 long impeded English progress, by the issue of a commis- 
 sion of inquiry which ended in the solution of the problem 
 by the system of poor-laws. For commerce, indeed, laws 
 could do little; and Elizabeth's active interference hin- 
 dered rather than furthered its advance; but the inter- 
 ference was lor the most part well meant, and her statue 
 in the center of the London Exchange was a tribute on 
 the part of the merchant-class to the interest with which 
 she watched, and shared personally in, its enterprises. 
 Her thrift won a general gratitude. The memories of the 
 Terror and of the Martyrs threw into bright relief the 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. i^S 
 
 aversion from bloodshed which was conspicuous in her 
 earlier reign, and never wholly wanting through its fiercer 
 close. Above all, there was a general confidence in her 
 instinctive knowledge of the national temper. Her finger 
 was always on the public pulse. She knew exactly when 
 she could resist the feeling of her people and when she 
 must give way before the new sentiment of freedom which 
 her policy had unconsciously fostered. But when she 
 retreated, her defeat had all the grace of victory; and the 
 frankness and unreserve of her surrender won back at 
 once the love that her resistance had lost. Her attitude 
 at home, in fact, was that of a woman whose pride in the 
 well-being of her subjects, and whose longing for their 
 favor, was the one warm touch in the coldness of her 
 natural temper. If Elizabeth could be said to love any- 
 thing, she loved England. ' Nothing, ' she said to her 
 first Parliament in words of unwonted fire, ' nothing, no 
 worldly thing under the sun, is so dear to me as the love 
 and good-will of my subjects.' And the love and good- 
 will which were so dear to her she fully won. 
 
 " She clung perhaps to her popularity the more passion- 
 ately that it hid in some measure from her the terrible 
 loneliness of her life. She was the last of the Tudors, the 
 last of Henry's children; and her nearest relatives were 
 Mary Stuart and the House of Suffolk, one the avowed, 
 the other the secret claimant of her throne. Among her 
 mother's kindred she found but a single cousin. What- 
 ever womanly tenderness she had, wrapt itself around 
 Leicester; but a marriage with Leicester was impossible, 
 and every other union, could she even have bent to one, 
 was denied to her by the political difliculties of her posi- 
 tion. The one cry of bitterness which burst from Eliza- 
 beth revealed her terrible sense of the solitude of her life. 
 
126 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 ' The Queen of Scots, ' she cried at the birth of James, 
 ' has a fair son, and I am but a barren stock. ' But the 
 loneliness of her position only reflected the loneliness of 
 her nature. She stood utterly apart from the world around 
 her, sometimes above it, sometimes below it, but never 
 of it. It was only on her intellectual side that Elizabeth 
 touched the England of her day. All its moral aspects 
 were simply dead to her. It was a time when men were 
 being lifted into nobleness by the new moral energy which 
 seemed suddenly to pulse through the whole people; when 
 honor and enthusiasm took colors of poetic beauty, and 
 religion became a chivalry. But the finer sentiments of 
 the men around her touched Elizabeth simply as the fair 
 tints of a picture would have touched her. She made her 
 market with equal indifference out of the heroism of 
 William of Orange or the bigotry of Philip. The noblest 
 aims and lives were only counters on her board. She was 
 the one soul in her realm whom the news of St. Bartholo- 
 mew stirred to no lasting thirst for vengeance; and while 
 England was thrilling with its triumph over the Armada, 
 its Queen was coolly grumbling over the cost, and making 
 her profit out of the spoilt provisions she had ordered 
 for the fleet that saved her. To the voice of gratitude, 
 indeed, she was absolutely deaf. She accepted service, 
 such as never was rendered to an English sovereign, with- 
 out a thought of return. \\'alsingham spent his fortune 
 in saving her life and her throne, and she left him to die 
 a beggar. Whatever odium or loss her manceuvres in- 
 curred she flung upon her counselors. To screen her 
 part in Mary's death she called on Davison to perish 
 broken-hearted in the Tower. But, as if by a strange 
 irony, it was to this very want of sympathy that she owed 
 some of the grander features of her character. If she was 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 127 
 
 without love, she was without hate. She cherished no 
 petty resentments; she never stooped to envy or suspicion 
 of the men who served her. She was indifferent to abuse. 
 Her good-humor was never ruffled by the charges of 
 wantonness and cruelty with which the Jesuits filled every 
 court in Europe. She was insensible to fear. Her life 
 became at last the mark for assassin after assassin, but the 
 thought of peril was the one hardest to bring home to her. 
 Even when the Catholic plots broke out in her very house- 
 hold, she would listen to no proposals for the removal of 
 Catholics from her court. 
 
 " It was this moral isolation which told so strangely 
 both for good and for evil on her policy toward the 
 Church. No woman ever lived who was so totally desti- 
 tute of the sentiment of religion. While the world around 
 her was being swayed more and more by theological 
 beliefs and controversies, Elizabeth was absolutely un- 
 touched by them. She was a child of the Italian 
 Renascence rather than of the New Learning of Colet or 
 Erasmus, and her attitude toward the enthusiasm of her 
 time was that of Lorenzo de' Medici towards Savonarola. 
 Her mind was unruffled by the spiritual problems which 
 were vexing the minds around her; to Elizabeth, indeed, 
 they were not only unintelligible, they were a little 
 ridiculous. She had the same intellectual contempt for 
 the coarser superstitition of the Romanist as for the 
 bigotry of the Protestant. She ordered images to be flung 
 into the fire, and quizzed the Puritans as ' brethren in 
 Christ. ' But she had no sort of religious aversion for 
 either Puritan or Papist. The Protestants grumbled at 
 the Catholic nobles whom she admitted to the presence. 
 The Catholics grumbled at the Protestant statesmen whom 
 she called to her council-board. But to Elizabeth the 
 
128 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRJTING. 
 
 arrangement was the most natural thing in the world. 
 She looked at theological differences in a purely political 
 light. She agreed with Henry the Fourth that a kingdom 
 was well worth a mass. It seemed an obvious thing to 
 her to hold out hopes of conversion as a means of deceiv- 
 ing Philip, or to gain a point in negotiation by restoring 
 the crucifix to her chapel. The first interest in her own 
 mind was the interest of public order, and she never could 
 understand how it could fail to be first in every one's 
 mind. Her ingenuity set itself to construct a system in 
 which ecclesiastical unity should not jar against the rights 
 of conscience; a compromise which merely required outer 
 ' conformity ' to the established worship, while, as she 
 was never weary of repeating, it ' left opinion free. ' For 
 this purpose she fell back from the very first on the system 
 of Henry the Eighth. ' I will do,' she told the Spanish 
 ambassador, ' as my father did. ' She let the connection 
 with Rome drop quietly without any overt act of separa- 
 tion. The first work of her Parliament was to undo the 
 work of Mary, to repeal the Statutes of Heresy, to dissolve 
 the refounded monasteries, and to restore the Royal 
 Supremacy. At her entry into London Elizabeth kissed 
 the English Bible which the citizens presented to her, and 
 promised 'diligently to read therein.' Further she had 
 no personal wish to go. A third of the Council, and two- 
 thirds of the people, were as opposed to any radical 
 changes in religion as the Queen. Among the gentry the 
 older and wealthier were on the conservative side, and 
 only the younger and meaner on the other. But it was 
 soon necessary to go further. If the Protestants were the 
 less numerous, they were the abler and the more vigorous 
 party; and the exiles who returned from Geneva brought 
 with them a fiercer hatred of Catholicism. Transubstan- 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 129 
 
 tiation and the Mass were identified with the fires of 
 Smithfield, while Edward's Prayer-book was hallowed by 
 the memories of the Martyrs. But, in her restoration of 
 the English Prayer-book, some slight alterations made by 
 Elizabeth in its language showed her wish to conciliate 
 the Catholics as far as possible. She had no mind to 
 commit herself to the system of the Protectorate. She 
 dropped the words ' Head of the Church ' from the Royal 
 title. The forty-two Articles were left for some years in 
 abeyance. If Elizabeth had had her will, she would have 
 retained the celibacy of the clergy, and restored the use of 
 crucifixes in the churches. But she was again foiled by 
 the increased bitterness of the religious division. The 
 London mob tore down the crosses in the streets. Her 
 attempt to retain the crucifix fell dead before the fierce 
 opposition of the Protestant clergy. On the other hand, 
 the Marian bishops, with a single exception, discerned the 
 Protestant drift of the changes she was making, and bore 
 imprisonment and deprivation rather than accept them. 
 But to the mass of the nation the compromise of Elizabeth 
 seems to have been fairly acceptable. The whole of the 
 clergy, save two hundred, submitted to the Act of 
 Supremacy, and adopted the Prayer-book. No marked 
 repugnance to the new worship was shown by the people 
 at large ; and Elizabeth was able to turn from questions 
 of belief to the question of order. On one point in the 
 treatment of the Church she was resolved to make no 
 difference. To the end of her reign she remained as bold 
 a plunderer of its wealth as either of her predecessors, and 
 carved out rewards for her ministers from the Church- 
 lands with a queenly disregard of the rights of property. 
 Lord Burleigh built up the estate of the house of Cecil 
 out of the demesnes of the see of Peterborough. The 
 
13° A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 neighborhood of Hatton Garden to Ely Place recalls the 
 spoliation of another bishopric in favor of the Queen's 
 sprightly chancellor. Her reply to the bishop's protest 
 against this robbery showed what Elizabeth meant by her 
 Ecclesiastical Supremacy. ' Proud prelate, ' she wrote, 
 ' you know what you were before I made you what you 
 are! If you do not immediately comply with my request, 
 by God ! I will unfrock you. ' But she suffered no plunder 
 save her own, and she was earnest for the restoration of 
 order and decency in the outer arrangements of the 
 Church. " * 
 
 4. From the following passage what idea do you form 
 of Clifford (i) as he actually is, (2) as he might have 
 been .? Express each in a sentence as Carlyle did his con- 
 ception of Dante, or of Coleridge. 
 
 5. What is the value of each incident in revealing 
 Clifford's character ? 
 
 Meanwhile, there was a step in the passageway, 
 above stairs. Phoebe recognized it as the same which had 
 passed upward, as through her dream, in the night-time. 
 The approaching guest, whoever it might be, appeared to 
 pause at the head of the staircase; he paused twice or 
 thrice in the descent; he paused again at the foot. Each 
 time, the delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather 
 from a forgetfulness of the purpose which had set him in 
 motion, or as if the person's feet came involuntarily to a 
 standstill because the motive power was too feeble to 
 sustain his progress. Finally, he made a long pause at 
 the threshold of the parlor. He took hold of the knob 
 of the door, then loosened his grasp without opening it. 
 Hepzibah, her hands convulsively clasped, stood gazing 
 at the entrance. 
 
 * Green: Short History of the English People, Chap VII. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION- 131 
 
 " The final pause at the threshold proved so long, that 
 Hepzibah, unable to endure the suspense, rushed forward, 
 threw open the door, and led in the stranger by the hand. 
 At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in an 
 old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wear- 
 ing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length. 
 It quite overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust 
 it back, and stared vaguely about the room. After a very 
 brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that 
 his footstep must necessarily be such a one as that which, 
 slowly, and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first 
 journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward. 
 Yet there were no tokens that his physical strength might 
 not have sufficed for a free and determined gait. It was 
 the spirit of the man that could not walk. The expres- 
 sion of his countenance — while, notwithstanding, it had 
 the light of reason in it — seemed to waver, and glimmer, 
 and nearly to die away, and feebly to recover itself again. 
 It was like a flame which we see twinkling among half- 
 extinguished embers; we gaze at it more intently than if 
 it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward — more 
 intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought 
 either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at 
 once extinguished. 
 
 " For an instant after entering the room, the guest 
 stood still, retaining Hepzibah 's hand, instinctively, as a 
 child does that of the grown person who guides it. He 
 - iw Phoebe, however, and caught an illumination from 
 ii-r youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a 
 
 iserfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected 
 brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was stand- 
 ing in the sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speak 
 nearer the truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at 
 
132 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 courtesy. Imperfect as it was, however, it conveyed an 
 idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace, such 
 as no practiced art of external manners could have 
 attained. It was too slight to seize upon at the instant; 
 yet, as recollected afterward, seemed to transfigure the 
 whole man. 
 
 "'Dear Clifford,' said Hepzibah, in the tone with 
 which one soothes a wayward infant, ' this is our cousin 
 Phoebe — little Phcebe Pyncheon — Arthur's only child, you 
 know. She has come from the country to stay with us 
 awhile; for our old house has grown to be very lonely 
 now.' 
 
 ' ' ' Phoebe .? — Phoebe Pyncheon ? — Phoebe .? ' repeated 
 the guest, with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined utterance. 
 ' Arthur's child! Ah, I forget! No matter! She is very 
 welcome! ' 
 
 " ' Come, dear Clifford, take this chair,' said Hepzibah, 
 leading him to his place. ' Pray, Pha;be, lower the cur- 
 tain a very little more. Now let us begin breakfast. ' 
 
 " The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, 
 and looked strangely around. He was evidently trying 
 to grapple with the present scene, and bring it home to 
 his mind with a more satisfactory distinctness. He 
 desired to be certain, at least, that he was here, in the 
 low-studded, cross-beamed, oaken-paneled parlor, and 
 not in some other spot, which had stereotyped itself mto 
 his senses. But the effort was too great to be sustained 
 with more than a fragmentary success. Continually, as 
 we may express it, he faded away out of his place; or, in 
 other words, his mind and consciousness took their 
 departure, leaving his wasted, gray, and melancholy 
 figure — a substantial emptiness, a material ghost — to 
 occupy his seat at table. Again, after a blank movement, 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 133 
 
 there would be a flickering taper-gleam in his eyeballs. 
 It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and was 
 doing its best to kindle the heart's household fire, and 
 light up intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous man- 
 sion, where it was doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant. 
 
 ' ' At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still im- 
 perfect animation, Phoebe became convinced of what she 
 had at first rejected as too extravagant and startling an 
 idea. She saw that the person before her must have 
 been the original of the beautiful miniature in her cousin 
 Hepzibah's possession. Indeed, with a feminine eye for 
 costume, she had at once identified the damask dressing- 
 gown, which enveloped him, as the same in figure, 
 material, and fashion with that so elaborately represented 
 in the picture. This old, faded garment, with all its pris- 
 tine brilliancy extinct, seemed, in some indescribable way, 
 to translate the wearer's untold misfortune, and make it 
 perceptible to the beholder's eye. It was the better to 
 be discerned, by this exterior type, how worn and old 
 were the soul's more immediate garments; that form and 
 countenance, the beauty and grace of which had almost 
 transcended the skill of the most exquisite of artists. It 
 could the more adequately be known that the soul of the 
 man must have suffered some miserable wrong, from its 
 earthly experience. There he seemed to sit, with a dim 
 veil of decay and ruin betwixt him and the world, but 
 through which, at flitting intervals, might be caught the 
 same expression, so refined, so softly imaginative, which 
 Malbone — venturing a happy touch, with suspended 
 breath — had imparted to the miniature! There had been 
 something so innately characteristic in this look, that all 
 the dusky years, and the burden of unfit calamity which 
 had fallen upon him, did not suffice utterly to destroy it. 
 
134 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 " Hepzibah had now poured out a cup of deliciously 
 fragrant coffee, and presented it to her guest. As his eyes 
 met hers, he seemed bewildered and disquieted. 
 
 " ' Is this you, Hepzibah .? ' he murmured, sadly; then, 
 more apart, and perhaps unconscious that he was over- 
 heard, ' How changed ! how changed ! And is she angry 
 with me ? Why does she bend her brow so ? ' 
 
 " Poor Hepzibah! It was that wretched scowl which 
 time, and her near-sightedness, and the fret of inward dis- 
 comfort, had rendered so habitual that any vehemence of 
 mood invariably evoked it. But at the indistinct murmur 
 of his words her whole face grew tender, and even lovely, 
 with sorrowful affection; the harshness of her features dis- 
 appeared, as it were, behind the warm and misty glow. 
 
 " ' Angry! ' she repeated; ' angry with you, Clifford!' 
 
 " Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a 
 plaintive and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, 
 yet without subduing a certain something which an obtuse 
 auditor might still have mistaken for asperity. It was as 
 if some transcendent musician should draw a soul-thrilling 
 sweetness out of a cracked instrument, which makes its 
 physical imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal 
 harmony — so deep was the sensibility that found an organ 
 in Hepzibah's voice! 
 
 " ' There is nothing but love here, Clifford! ' she added 
 — ' nothing but love! You are at home! ' 
 
 " The guest responded to her tone by a smile, which 
 did not half light up his face. Feeble as it was, however, 
 and gone in a moment, it had a charm of wonderful 
 beauty. It was followed by a coarser expression; or one 
 that had the effect of coarseness on the fine mold and out- 
 line of his countenance, because there was nothing intel- 
 lectual to temper it. It was a look of appetite. He eat 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. I3S 
 
 food with what might almost be termed voracity; and 
 seemed to forget himself, Hepzibah, the young girl, and 
 everything else around him, in the sensual enjoyment 
 which the bountifully spread table afforded. In his 
 natural system, though high-wrought and delicately 
 refined, a sensibility to the delights of the palate was 
 probably inherent. It would have been kept in check, 
 however, and even converted into an accomplishment, and 
 one of the thousand modes of intellectual culture, had his 
 more ethereal characteristics retained their vigor. But as 
 it existed now, the effect was painful and made Phoebe 
 droop her eyes. 
 
 "In a little while the guest became sensible of the 
 fragrance of the yet untasted coffee. He quaffed it 
 eagerly. The subtle essence acted on him like a charmed 
 draught, and caused the opaque substance of his animal 
 being to grow transparent, or at least, translucent ; so that 
 a spiritual gleam was transmitted through it, with a 
 clearer luster than hitherto. 
 
 ' ' ' More, more ! ' he cried, with nervous haste in his 
 utterance, as if anxious to retain his grasp of what sought 
 to escape him. ' This is what I need ! Give me more ! ' 
 
 "Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat 
 more erect, and looked out from his eyes with a glance 
 that took note of what it rested on. It was not so much 
 that his expression grew more intellectual; this, though 
 it had its share, was not the most peculiar effect. Neither 
 was what we call the moral nature so forcibly awakened 
 as to present itself in remarkable prominence. But a 
 certain fine temper of being was now not brought out in 
 full relief, but changeably and imperfectly betrayed, of 
 which it was the function to deal with all beautiful and 
 enjoyable things. In a character where it should exist as 
 
136 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 the chief attribute, it would bestow on its possessor an 
 exquisite taste, and an enviable susceptibility of happiness. 
 Beauty would be his life; his aspirations would all tend 
 toward it; and, allowing his frame and physical organs to 
 be in consonance, his own developments would likewise 
 be beautiful. 
 
 " Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed 
 Clifford's nature to be a Sybarite. It was perceptible, 
 even there, in the dark old parlor, in the inevitable 
 polarity with which his eyes were attracted toward the 
 quivering play of sunbeams through the shadowy foliage. 
 It was seen in his appreciating notice of the vase of 
 flowers, the scent of which he inhaled with a zest almost 
 peculiar to a physical organization so refined that spiritual 
 ingredients are molded in with it. It was betrayed in the 
 unconscious smile with which he regarded Phcebe, whose 
 fresh and maidenly figure was both sunshine and flowers 
 - — their essence, in a prettier and more agreeable mode of 
 manifestation. 
 
 " Not less evident was this love and necessity for the 
 beautiful, in the instinctive caution with which, even so 
 soon, his eyes turned away from his hostess, and wandered 
 to any quarter rather than come back. It was Hepzibah's 
 misfortune — not Clifford's fault. How could he — so 
 yellow as she was, so wrinkled, so sad of mien, with that 
 odd uncouthness of a turban on her head, and that most 
 perverse of scowls contorting her brow — how could he 
 love to gaze at her ? 
 
 " The guest leaned back in his chair. Mingled in his 
 countenance with a dreamy delight there was a troubled 
 look of effort and unrest. He was seeking to make him- 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. i37 
 
 self more fully sensible of the scene around him; or, 
 perhaps, dreading it to be a dream, or a play of imagina- 
 tion, was vexing the fair moment with a struggle for some 
 added brilliancy and more durable illusion. 
 
 ' ' ' How pleasant ! How delightful ! ' he murmured, 
 but not as if addressing any one. ' Will it last ? How 
 balmy the atmosphere through that open window! An 
 open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine! 
 Those flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl's 
 face, how cheerful, how blooming! — a flower with the 
 dew on it, and sunbeams in the dew-drops! Ah! this 
 must be all a dream ! A dream ! A dream ! But it has 
 quite hidden the four stone walls! ' 
 
 " Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a cavern 
 or a dungeon had come over it ; there was no more light 
 in its expression than might have come through the iron 
 grates of a prison window— still lessening, too, as if he 
 were sinking further into the depths. Phoebe (being of 
 that quickness and activity of temperament that she 
 seldom long refrained from taking a part, and generally a 
 good one, in what was going forward) now felt herself 
 moved to address the stranger. 
 
 " ' Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this 
 morning in the garden,' said she, choosing a small 
 crimson one from among the flowers in the vase. ' There 
 will be but five or six on the bush this season. This is 
 the most perfect of them all ; not a speck of blight or 
 mildew m it. And how sweet it is ! — sweet like no other 
 rose I One can never forget that scent ! ' 
 
 " ' Ah! — let me see! — let me hold it! ' cried the guest, 
 eagerly seizing the flower, which, by the spell peculiar 
 to remembered odors, brought innumerable associations 
 along Avith the fragrance that it exhaled. ' Thank you ! 
 
138 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 This has done me good. I remember how I used to prize 
 this flower — long ago, I suppose, very long ago ! — or was 
 it only yesterday ? It makes me feel young again I Am 
 I young ? Either this remembrance is singularly distinct, 
 or this consciousness strangely dim! But how kind of 
 the fair young girl ! Thank you ! Thank you ! ' 
 
 "The favorable excitement derived from this little 
 crimson rose afforded Clifford the brightest moment which 
 he enjoyed at the breakfast-table. It might have lasted 
 longer, but that his eyes happened, soon afterward, to 
 rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, out of his dingy 
 frame and lusterless canvas, was looking down on the 
 scene like a ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial 
 one. The guest made an impatient gesture of the hand, 
 and addressed Hepzibah with what might easily be recog- 
 nized as the licensed irritability of a petted member of the 
 family. 
 
 " ' Hepzibah! — Hepzibah! ' cried he, with no little 
 force and distinctness, ' why do you keep that odious pic- 
 ture on the wall ? Yes, yes! — that is precisely your taste! 
 I have told you, a thousand times, that it was the evil 
 genius of the house! — my evil genius particularly! Take 
 It down at once!' 
 
 " ' Dear Clifford,' said Hepzibah, sadly, ' you know it 
 cannot be! ' 
 
 "'Then, at all events,' continued he, still speaking 
 with some energy, ' pray cover it with a crimson curtain, 
 broad enough to hang in folds, and with a golden border 
 and tassels. I cannot bear it! It must not stare me in 
 the face! ' 
 
 "'Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered,' 
 said Hepzibah, soothingly. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 139 
 " ' This very day, remember 1 ' said he; 
 
 " But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were 
 marked, through which he had passed, occurring in so 
 brief an interval of time, had evidently wearied the 
 stranger. He was probably accustomed to a sad mo- 
 notony of life, not so much flowing in a stream, how- 
 ever sluggish, as stagnating in a pool around his feet. A 
 slumberous veil diffused itself over his countenance, and 
 had an effect, morally speaking, on its naturally delicate 
 and elegant outline, like that which a brooding mist, with 
 no sunshine in it, throws over the features of a landscape. 
 He appeared to become grosser — almost cloddish. If 
 aught of interest or beauty — even ruined beauty — had 
 heretofore been visible in this man, the beholder might 
 now begin to doubt it, and to accuse his own imagination 
 of deluding him with whatever grace had flickered over 
 that visage, and whatever exquisite luster had gleamed in 
 those filmy eyes. 
 
 " Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp 
 and peevish tinkle of the shop-bell made itself audible. 
 Striking most disagreeably on Clifford's auditory organs 
 and the characteristic sensibility of his nerves, it caused 
 him to start upright out of his chair. 
 
 " ' Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance 
 have we now ii» the house f ' cried he, wreaking his 
 resentful impatience — as a matter of course, and a custom 
 of old — on the one person in the world that loved him. 
 ' I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you 
 permit it .? In the name of all dissonance, what can it 
 be?'"* 
 
 * Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables, Chap. VII. 
 
14° A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 LESSON XIII. 
 
 1. Describe a picture as vividly as you can while laying 
 the least possible emphasis on its interpretative value. 
 
 (i) Michelangelo's Fates. 
 
 (2) Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks. 
 
 (3) An "impressionist" picture. 
 
 (4) A "realistic" picture 
 
 2. Describe the same picture, emphasizing its interpre- 
 tative aspect. 
 
 3. Contrast two pictures embodying a different treat- 
 ment of the same subject. 
 
 (i) A Madonna by Rubens and by Botticelli. 
 
 (2) An Annunciation (e.g., by Fra Angelico, Botti- 
 
 celli, Andrea del Sarto, Rossetti). 
 
 (3) Christ (Hoffmann and Munkacsy). 
 
 (4) St. Anne teaching the Virgin (Rubens and 
 
 Muller). 
 
 (5) A Holy Family (Raphael, del Sarto, Michel- 
 
 angelo, etc.). 
 
 (6) The Fates (Michelangelo, Thurmann, Simmons). 
 
 4. Expound Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. 
 
 5. Give an expository description of a piece of statuary, 
 (i) The Winged Victory. 
 
 (2) Niobe. 
 
 (3) Laocoon. 
 
 (4) The Dying Gaul. 
 
 (5) The Venus of Milo and the Medici Venus. 
 
 (6) The Discobolus, compared with Michelangelo's 
 
 David. 
 
 (7) Mr. George Barnard's Pan, or his colossal group, 
 
 " I feel two natures struggling within me." * 
 
 * An incident connected with this group illustrates the real 
 power of art to embody a given meaning, provided the mean- 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 141 
 
 Analyze the expository uses of description in the fol- 
 lowing passages : 
 
 6. "Of all that remains to us of Greek antiquity, this 
 figui-e is perhaps the most consummate personification of 
 loveliness, with regard to its countenance, as that of the 
 Venus of the Tribune is with regard to its entire form of a 
 woman. It is colossal: the size adds to its value; because 
 it allows the spectator the choice of a greater number of 
 points of view, and affords him a more analytical one, in 
 which to catch a greater number of the infinite modes of 
 expression, of which any form approaching ideal beauty is 
 necessarily composed. It is the figure of a mother in the 
 act of sheltering, from some divine and inevitable peril, 
 the last, we may imagine, of her surviving children. 
 
 ' ' The little creature, terrified, as we may conceive, at 
 the strange destruction of all its kindred, has fled to its 
 mother, and is hiding its head in the folds of her robe, 
 and casting back one arm, as in a passionate appeal for 
 defense, where it never before could have been sought in 
 vain. She is clothed in a thin tunic of delicate woof; and 
 her hair is fastened on her head into a knot, probably by 
 that mother whose care will never fasten it agam. Niobe 
 is enveloped in profuse drapery, a portion of which the 
 
 ing be one whose appeal is grounded in universal human ex- 
 perience. At the "press view " of the Champs du Mars Salon 
 in 1894, seven of Mr. Barnard's groups and figures were ex- 
 hibited; they were numbered, but not yet labeled with their 
 titles. Mr. Thiebault Sisson, then first art-critic of France, 
 approached Mr. Barnard, and leading him to the group in 
 question asked him what was its title. Mr. Barnard quoted. 
 •' Je sens deux etres en moi," and Mr. Sisson said, "It is 
 strange — while looking at the group the first time, an hour 
 ago, I felt an irresistible impulse to express my impressions 
 in verse and the first line was, ' Je sens deux etres en moi.' " 
 
142 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 left hand has gathered up, and is in the act of extending 
 It over the child in the instinct of shielding her from what 
 reason knows to be inevitable. The right (as the restorer 
 has properly imagined), is drawing up her daughter to 
 her; and with that instinctive gesture, and by its gentle 
 pressure, is encouraging the child to believe that it can 
 give security. The countenance of Niobe is the consum- 
 mation of feminine majesty and loveliness, beyond which 
 the imagination scarcely doubts that it can conceive any- 
 thing. 
 
 ' ' That masterpiece of the poetic harmony of marble 
 expresses other feelings. There is embodied a sense of 
 the inevitable and rapid destiny which is consummating 
 around her, as if it were already over. It seems as if 
 despair and beauty had combined, and produced nothing 
 but the sublimity of grief. As the motions of the form 
 expressed the instinctive sense of the possibility of pro- 
 tecting the child, and the accustomed and affectionate 
 assurance that she would find an asylum within her arms, 
 so reason and imagination speak in the countenance the 
 certainty that no mortal defense is of avail. There is no 
 terror in the countenance, only grief — deep, remediless 
 grief. There is no anger; — of what avail is indignation 
 against what is known to be omnipotent ? There is no 
 selfish shrinking from personal pain — there is no panic at 
 supernatural agency — there is no adverting to herself as 
 herself; the calamity is mightier than to leave scope for 
 such emotions. 
 
 "Everything is swallowed up in sorrow; she is all 
 tears; her countenance, in assured expectation of the 
 arrow piercing its last victim in her embrace, is fixed on 
 her omnipotent enemy. The pathetic beauty of the 
 expression of her tender, and inexhaustible, and un- 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 143 
 
 quenchable despair, is beyond the effect of any other 
 sculpture. As soon as the arrow shall pierce her last tie 
 upon earth, the fable that she was turned into stone, or 
 dissolved into a fountain of tears, will be but a feeble 
 emblem of the sadness of hopelessness, in which the few 
 and evil years of her remaining life, we feel, must flow 
 away. 
 
 "It is difficult to speak of the beauty of the counte- 
 nance, or to make intelligible in words, from what such 
 astonishing loveliness results. 
 
 " The head, resting somewhat backward upon the full 
 and flowing contour of the neck, is as in the act of watch- 
 ing an event momently to arrive. The hair is delicately 
 divided on the forehead, and a gentle beauty gleams from 
 the broad and clear forehead, over which its strings are 
 drawn. The face is of an oval fullness, and the features 
 conceived with the daring of a sense of power. In this 
 respect it resembles the careless majesty which Nature 
 stamps upon the rare masterpieces of her creation, har- 
 monizing them as it were from the harmony of the spirit 
 within. Yet all this not only consists with, but is the 
 cause of, the subtlest delicacy of clear and tender beauty 
 — the expression at once of innocence and sublimity of 
 soul — of purity and strength— of all that which touches 
 the most removed and divine of the chords that make 
 music in our thoughts — of that which shakes with astonish- 
 ment even the most superficial. " * 
 
 7. " Take, for instance, one of the most perfect poems 
 or pictures (I use the words as synonymous) which 
 modern times have seen: — the ' Old Shepherd's Chief- 
 mourner. ' Here the exquisite execution of the glossy and 
 
 * Shelley: Remarks on some of the Statues in the Gallery of 
 Florence. 
 
144 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 crisp hair of the dog, the bright sharp touching of the 
 green bough beside it, the clear painting of the wood of 
 the coffin and the folds of the blanket, are language- 
 language clear and expressive in the highest degree. But 
 the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood; 
 the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged 
 the blanket off the trestle; the total powerlessness of the 
 head laid, close and motionless, upon its folds; the fixed 
 and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness; the 
 rigidity of repose, which marks that there has been no 
 motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last 
 blow was struck on the coffin-lid; the quietness and 
 gloom of the chamber; the spectacles marking the place 
 where the Bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has 
 been the life, how unwatched the departure of him who 
 is now laid solitary in his sleep — these are all thoughts, 
 thoughts by which the picture is separated at once from 
 hundreds of equal merit, as far as mere painting goes, by 
 which it ranks as a work of high art, and stamps its 
 author, not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin 
 or the fold of a drapery, but as the Man of Mind." * 
 
 In what ways has Ruskin a right to use as synonymous 
 the words poem and picture ? In what ways not ? 
 
 8. "The sacristan was quickly found, however, and 
 lost no time in disclosing the youthful Archangel, setting 
 his divine foot on the head of his fallen adversary. It 
 was an image of that greatest of future events, which we 
 hope for so ardently — at least, while we are young — but 
 find so very long in coming — the triumph of goodness 
 over the evil principle. 
 
 " ' Where can Hilda be ? ' exclaimed Kenyon. ' It is 
 
 * Ruskin: Modern Painters, Vol. I, Chap. II. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. HS 
 
 not her custom ever to fail in an engagement; and the 
 present one was made entirely on her account. Except 
 herself, you know, we were all agreed in our recollection 
 of the picture. ' 
 
 But we were wrong, and Hilda right, as you per- 
 ceive, ' said Miriam, directing his attention to the point 
 on which their dispute of the night before had arisen. 
 ' It is not easy to detect her astray as regards any picture 
 on which those clear, soft eyes of hers have ever rested. ' 
 
 ' ' ' And she has studied and admired few pictures so 
 much as this,' observed the sculptor. ' No wonder; for 
 there is hardly another so beautiful in the world. What 
 an expression of heavenly serenity in the Archangel's face! 
 There is a degree of pain, trouble, and disgust at being 
 brought in contact with sin, even for the purpose of 
 quelling and punishing it; and yet a celestial tranquility 
 pervades his whole being. ' 
 
 " ' I have never been able, ' said Miriam, ' to admire 
 this picture nearly so much as Hilda does, in its moral 
 and intellectual aspect. If it cost her more trouble to be 
 good, if her soul were less white and pure, she would be 
 a more competent critic of this picture, and would 
 estimate it not half so high. I see its defects to-day more 
 clearly than ever before. ' 
 
 ' ' ' What are some of them ? ' asked Kenyon. 
 
 ' ' ' That Archangel, now, ' Miriam continued ; ' how 
 fair he looks, with his unruffled wings, with his unbacked 
 sword, and clad in his bright armor, and that exquisitely 
 fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest paradisiacal mode ! 
 What a dainty air of the first celestial society! With 
 what half scornful delicacy he sets his prettily sandaled 
 foot on the head of his prostrate foe ! But, is it thus that 
 virtue looks the moment after its death-struggle with 
 
146 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 evil? No, no; 1 could have told Guido better. A full 
 third of the Archangel's feathers should have been torn 
 from his wings; the rest all rufifled, till they looked like 
 Satan's own! His sword should be streaming with blood, 
 and perhaps broken half-way to the hilt; his armor 
 crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory; a bleeding gash 
 on his brow, cutting right across the stern scowl of battle! 
 He should press his foot hard down upon the old serpent, 
 as if his very soul depended upon it, feeling him squirm 
 mightily, and doubting whether the fight were half over 
 yet, and how the victory might turn! And, with all this 
 fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable horror, there 
 should still be something high, tender, and holy in 
 Michael's eyes, and around his mouth. But the battle 
 never was such child's play as Guide's dapper Archangel 
 seems to have found it. ' 
 
 " ' For Heaven's sake, Miriam,' cried Kenyon, aston- 
 ished at the wild energy of her talk, ' paint the picture of 
 man's struggle against sin according to your own idea! 
 I think it will be a masterpiece.' 
 
 " ' The picture would have its share of truth, I assure 
 you, ' she answered ; ' but I am sadly afraid the victory 
 would fall on the wrong side. Just fancy a smoke- 
 blackened, fiery-eyed demon, bestriding that nice young 
 angel, clutching his white throat with one of his hinder 
 claws; and giving a triumphant whisk of his scaly tail, 
 with a poisonous dart at the end of it ! That is what they 
 risk, poor souls, who do battle with Michael's enemy.' " * 
 
 Write a comparison of the underlying thought here 
 and that in Raskin's comment on Fortitude, cited on 
 p. 69. 
 
 * Hawthorne; The Marble Faun, Chap, XX. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 147 
 
 9- 
 
 " ' And blind Orion hungry for the morn.' 
 
 " Orion, the subject of this landscape, was the classical 
 Nimrod ; and is called by Homer, ' a hunter of shadows, 
 himself a shade.' He was the son of Neptune; and 
 having lost an eye in some affray between the gods and 
 men, was told that if he would go to meet the rising sun 
 he would recover his sight. He is represented setting 
 out on his journey, with men on his shoulders to guide 
 him, a bow in his hand, and Diana in the clouds greeting 
 him. He stalks along, a giant upon earth, and reels and 
 falters in his gait, as 'if just awakened out -of sleep, or 
 uncertain of his way; you see his blindness, though his 
 back is turned. Mists rise around him, and veil the sides 
 of the green forests; earth is dank and fresh with dews, 
 the ' gray dawn and the Pleiades before him dance, ' and 
 in the distance are seen the blue hills and sullen ocean. 
 Nothing was ever more finely conceived or done. It 
 breathes the spirit of the morning; its moisture, its 
 repose, its obscurity, waiting the miracle of light to 
 kindle it into smiles; the whole is, like the principal figure 
 in it, ' a forerunner of the dawn. ' The same atmosphere 
 tinges and imbues every object, the same dull light 
 ' shadowy sets off ' the face of nature ; one feeling of vast- 
 ness, of strangeness, and of primeval forms pervades the 
 painter's canvas, and we are thrown back upon the first 
 integrity of things. ' ' * 
 
 Why is it necessary to tell the story of this picture .? Is 
 anything gained by telling it before the picture is 
 described ? 
 
 ID. Compare with your own interpretation of Mona 
 
 * Hazlitt: On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin. 
 
148 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 Lisa the following by Pater. If the two disagree, discover 
 the cause, and endeavor to reconcile them. 
 
 " Z,a Gioconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's 
 masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought 
 and work. In suggestiveness, only the Melancholia of 
 Diirer is comparable to it; and no crude symbolism dis- 
 turbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We 
 all know the face and h'ands of the figure set in its marble 
 chair, in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint 
 light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has 
 chilled it least. 
 
 ' ' The presence that thus rose so strangely beside the 
 waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand 
 years men had come to desire. Hers is the head upon 
 which all ' the ends of the world are come, ' and the 
 eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out 
 from within upon the flesh; the deposit, little cell by cell, 
 of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite 
 passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white 
 Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and 
 how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which 
 the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the 
 thoughts and experiences of the world have etched and 
 molded there, in that which they have of power to refine 
 and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of 
 Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle ages 
 with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the 
 return of the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She 
 is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the 
 vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the 
 secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, 
 and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. I49 
 
 strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was 
 the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as St. Anne, the 
 mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the 
 sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy 
 with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and 
 tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a per- 
 petual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, 
 is an old one; and modern thoilght has conceived the 
 idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up 
 in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady 
 Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the 
 symbol of the modern idea." * 
 
 II. Read Sill's T/ie Venus of Milo, and compare its 
 interpretation with yours (5, (5) ). 
 
 Larger than mortal woman I see thee stand. 
 
 With beautiful head bent forward steadily. 
 
 As if those earnest eyes could see 
 
 Some glorious thing far off, to which thy hand 
 
 Invisibly stretched onward seems to be. 
 
 From thy white forehead's breadth of calm, the hair 
 
 Sweeps lightly, as a cloud in windless air. 
 
 Placid thy brows, as that still line at dawn 
 
 Where the dim hills along the sky are drawn, 
 
 When the last stars are drowned in deeps ^far. 
 
 Thy quiet mouth — I know not if it smile, 
 
 Or if in some wise pity thou wilt weep^ 
 
 Little as one may tell, some summer morn. 
 
 Whether the dreamy brightness is most glad, 
 
 Or wonderfully sad — ■ 
 
 So bright, so still thy lips serenely sleep; 
 
 So fixedly thine earnest eyes the while. 
 
 As clear and steady as the morning star, 
 
 Their gaze upon that coming glory keep. 
 
 Thy garment's fallen folds 
 
 Leave beautiful the fair, round breast 
 
 * Pater: The Renaissance ; Leonardo da Vinci, 
 
ISO A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 In sacred loveliness; the bosom deep 
 
 Where happy babe might sleep; 
 
 The ample waist no narrowing girdle holds, 
 
 Where daughters slim might come and cling and rest, 
 
 Like tendriled vines against the plane-tree pressed. 
 
 Around thy firm, large limbs and steady feet 
 
 The robes slope downward, as the folded hills 
 
 Slope round the mountain's knees, when shadow fills 
 
 The hollow caflons, and the wind is sweet 
 
 From russet oat-fields and the ripening wheat.* 
 
 LESSON XIV. 
 
 T. Describe, so that a child would get a vivid picture 
 of It: 
 
 The Parthenon, or the temple at jEgina 
 
 An Egyptian building. 
 
 The cathedral at Cologne or Milan. 
 
 2. Use one of these buildings to make clear the char- 
 acter of the people who built it or the nature of their 
 religion. 
 
 3. The following passage falls into two parts dealing 
 respectively with the cathedral itself and with Gothic 
 architecture generally. How does each help the other ? 
 How do they differ in method and effect ? Which stages 
 of the original impression has the memory picture lost and 
 which has it retained ? Is this usual in a memory of any- 
 thmg .? 
 
 ' ' The traces remaining in my memory represent it 
 [Lichfield cathedral] as airy rather than massive. A 
 multitude of beautiful shapes appeared to be compre- 
 hended within its single outline; it was a kind of kaleido- 
 scopic mystery, so rich a variety of aspect did it assume 
 from each altered point of view, through the presentation 
 of a different face, and the rearrangement of its peaks and 
 
 *Sill: T/ie Venus of Milo. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 151 
 
 pinnacles, and the three battlemented towers with the 
 spires that shot heavenward from all three, but one loftier 
 than its fellows. Thus it impressed you at every change 
 as a newly created structure of the passing moment, in 
 which yet you lovingly recognized the half-vanished struc- 
 ture of the instant before, and felt, moreover, a joyful 
 faith in the indestructible existence of all this cloudlike 
 vicissitude. A Gothic cathedral is surely the most 
 wonderful work which mortal man has yet achieved ; so 
 vast, so intricate, and so profoundly simple, with such 
 strange, delightful recesses in its grand figure, so difficult 
 to comprehend within one idea, and yet all so consonant 
 that it ultimately draws the beholder and his universe into 
 its harmony. It is the only thing in the world that is 
 vast enough and rich enough." * 
 
 LESSON XV. 
 
 I. Explain, as for a younger audience, the meaning of 
 the lines : 
 
 (i) " Lest one good custom should corrupt the 
 world, "t 
 
 (2) " I am a part of all that I have met." J 
 
 (3) " Henceforth ask not good fortune; I myself am 
 
 good fortune." § 
 
 (4) " Ah! but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. 
 Or what's a heaven for ? " || 
 
 (5) "Time's current strong 
 
 Leaves us true to nothing long." ^ 
 
 * Hawthorne: Our Old Home ; Lichfield and Uttoxeter. 
 
 f Tennyson: Morte d' Arthur. 
 
 X lb.: Ulysses. 
 
 § Whitman: The Open Road. 
 
 II Browning: Andrea del Sarto. 
 
 Tf Arnold: A Memory Picture. 
 
152 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 2. Trace the source of the effect in the following lines; 
 
 Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 
 Little breezes dusk and shiver 
 Thro' the wave that runs forever 
 By the island in the river 
 
 Flowing down to Camelot. 
 
 Four gray walls, and four gray towers, 
 Overlook a space of flowers, 
 And the silent isle imbowers 
 The Lady of Shalott.* 
 
 3. Interpret the thought in the following poems: 
 (i) Rudyard Kipling's T/ie Af tracks, The King. 
 
 (2) Tennyson's Crossing the Bar. 
 
 (3) Rossetti's Wood-spurge. 
 
 The wind flapped loose, the wind was still. 
 Shaken out dead from tree and hill; 
 I had walked on at the wind's will,— 
 I sat now, for the wind was still. 
 
 Between my knees my forehead was, — 
 My lips drawn in, said not alas ! 
 My hair was over in the grass, 
 My naked ears heard the day pass. 
 
 My eyes, wide open, had the run 
 
 Of some ten weeds to fix upon; 
 
 Among those few, out of the sun. 
 
 The wood-spurge flowered, three cups in one. 
 
 * Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott. If enough volumes are 
 accessible, the entire poem would be a fascinating subject for 
 the student to work at, getting out its means of sensuous ap- 
 peal, through metre, through images directly presented or 
 suggested, through the sounds and the associative values of 
 words, etc. This could be done in class as well. The poem 
 ought, of course, to be read aloud or half its effect is lost. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. IS3 
 
 From perfect grief there need not be 
 Wisdom or even memory; 
 One thing then learnt remains to me, — 
 The wood-spurge has a cup of three. 
 
 (4) Emily Dickinson's I asked no other thing. 
 
 I asked no other thing, 
 
 No other was denied. 
 
 I offered Being for it; 
 
 The mighty merchant smiled. 
 
 Brazil? He twirled a button, 
 Without a glance my way; 
 " But, madam, is there nothing else 
 That we can show to-day?" 
 
 4. Discover and trace to its source the total effect of 
 the following poems : 
 
 (i) The first or "spring" chorus in Swinburne's 
 
 Atalanta in Calydon. 
 (2) The choric song in Tennyson's Lotos-eaters. 
 {3) Arnold's Forsaken Merman. 
 
 (4) Poe's Raven. 
 
 (5) Browning's Prospice. 
 
 (6) Rudyard Kipling's Mandalay and Recessional. 
 
 (7) William Morris's "Apology" at the beginning 
 
 of the Earthly Paradise. 
 
 Note that in interpreting this effect different means may 
 be taken in different cases. Thus, the Raven and the 
 Choric Song are perhaps best expounded by describing the 
 mood into which they throw the hearer, the Forsaken 
 Merman, by telling the story and emphasizing some of its 
 aspects, etc. 
 
 5. Compare a picture and a poem which it has inspired. 
 This may best be done by giving an interpretation of the 
 
154 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 picture itself, then comparing and reconciling it with the 
 interpretation eihbodied in the poem. 
 
 Orphetis and Eurydice and Browning's poem. 
 
 The Mile and the Medici Venus, and Sill's poem. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto's portrait of himself and his wife, and 
 Browning's poem. 
 
 Burne- Jones' Vampire, and Mr. Kipling's poem. 
 
 Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks, and Rossetti's 
 sonnet, Our Lady of the Rocks. 
 
 6. Expound a piece of music, using any of the means 
 noted on pp. 83-85.* For example: 
 
 (i) Liszt : Les Preludes. (Cf. Liszt's own somewhat 
 fanciful but interesting exposition of it.) 
 Hungarian Rhapsodies. 
 (2) Beethoven : Pathetic Sonata. 
 
 Andante movement in the Fifth Symphony. 
 Music to Schiller's Hymn to Joy (end of the 
 
 Ninth Symphony). 
 Overture to Coriolanus. 
 
 * If this is attempted, some care should be taken to guard 
 against misunderstandings. The student should not try to 
 force himself to an expression of sensibilities that he does 
 not possess, nor should he be allowed to suppose that the 
 " meaning " in a musical composition can be reported with the 
 exactness of an answer to a puzzle. It is well to play over to 
 the class a number of passages where we can be sure what 
 mood the composer intended to express, as is the case in ora- 
 torio music, in Schubert's and Grieg's songs, in Liza Leh- 
 mann's musical setting of the Rubiiydt, In a Persian Garden. 
 After this, other things may be played, to be interpreted by 
 them. It is well to avoid resorting to " program music," and 
 choose such as keeps to the legitimate sphere of music, the 
 expression of mood. 
 
DESCRIPTION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. I5S 
 
 (3) Wagner: Music for the death of Siegfried, Gotter- 
 
 dammerung. 
 The Rhinedaughters' song. 
 The call of the Walkiire. 
 Waldweben. 
 Siegfried's horn (in Rheingold and elsewhere 
 
 throughout the trilogy). 
 
 7. In the following passage the writer interprets Men- 
 delssohn's Spring Song by describing the images it calls 
 up to her mind, and the mood this suggests. Define 
 what this underlying mood is. 
 
 ' ' For from far away somewhere came the softest, 
 sweetest song. A woman was singing, somewhere. 
 Nearer and nearer she came, over the hills, in the lovely 
 early morning, louder and louder she sang — and it was 
 the Spring-song! Now she was with us — young, clear- 
 eyed, happy, bursting into delicious flights of laughter 
 between the bars. Her eyes I know were gray. She did 
 not run nor leap — she came steadily on, with a swift, 
 strong, swaying, lilting movement. She was all odorous 
 of the morning, all vocal with the spring. Her voice 
 laughed even while she sang, and the perfect, smooth 
 succession of the separate sounds was unlike any effect I 
 have ever heard. Now she passed — she was gone by. 
 Softer, fainter, ah, was she gone ? No ; she turned her 
 head, tossed us flowers and sang again, turned, and sing- 
 ing, left us. One moment of soft echo — and then it was 
 still.* 
 
 * Josephine D. Daskam; Smith College Monthly, Vol. V, pp. 
 tl-12. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSI- 
 TION. 
 
 The word " definition " naturally brings to our mind 
 the notion of such formal statements as this : ' ' An animal 
 is a living organism broadly distinguished from a plant by 
 incapacity to convert inorganic into organic matter." 
 What is the object of such a definition, and how is it 
 attained ? Evidently it aims to tell us exactly what an 
 animal is, and this is accomplished by doing two things: 
 first, by assigning the object to a large class, in this case, 
 " living organisms; " and second, by distinguishing it 
 from other members of that class, in this case, " plants." 
 We might picture a tabular scheme of the result, thus: 
 
 ' Those which can convert ) 
 
 inorganic into organic r Plants 
 
 matter. ' 
 Those which cannot Animals 
 
 Living organisms. 
 
 This is the method pursued by all definitions; they, on 
 the one hand, assign the subject defined to a class or 
 genus, and, on the other, state what qualities it has which 
 are not found in all members of the class and which 
 therefore constitute a distinct species within the class. 
 The two processes are respectively designated by the terms 
 "classification" or " identification " on the one hand, 
 
 156 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 15 7 
 
 and ' ' discrimination " or " differentiation ' ' on the other, 
 and a definition is technically said to define an object by 
 giving its " genus " and its " differentia." 
 
 Clearly, the aim of definition is identical with that of 
 exposition as we have observed it in the preceding 
 chapter : both aim to convey an adequate notion of the 
 thing itself, of its real nature, both therefore must be 
 called exposition. But do they pursue this common aim 
 by totally dissimilar methods ? Is exposition by defini- 
 tion, as a process, to be set absolutely apart from exposi- 
 tion by description ? Or is it possible that this new form 
 of exposition may be related to the other as that was to 
 description ? 
 
 Suppose we reconsider some of the cases already dis- 
 cussed, — Carlyle's Mahomet, for example. This essay, 
 as we saw, embodied the exposition of a character chiefly 
 through description of its external manifestations, — 
 chiefly, but not wholly, for besides emphasizing the indi- 
 vidual traits in Mahomet, his appearance, his manner, 
 his words, it also emphasized certain traits which he pos- 
 sessed in common with others, that is, the essay not only 
 characterizes him, but assigns him to a class, the class 
 "Prophet," and to a yet larger class, that of "Great 
 Men." This is the significance of such passages as the 
 following: 
 
 ' ' A silent, great soul ; he was one of those who cannot 
 6ul be in earnest ; whom nature herself has appointed to 
 be sincere ... he was alone with his own soul and the 
 reality of things. . . . Such sincerity, as we have named 
 it, has in very truth something of divine. ' ' 
 
 And throughout the essay there is a continual reverting 
 to the qualities, called by Carlyle " sincerity, " "origi- 
 nality, " " the seeing eye, ' ' and an emphasis on these 
 
158 
 
 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 qualities not as the exclusive possession of Mahomet, but 
 as belonging to all heroic natures. Having established 
 the relation between Mahomet and this large class, Great 
 Men, Carlyle proceeds to further classification, subdivid- 
 ing Great Men into two classes. Poets and Prophets: 
 
 " Fundamentally, indeed, they are still the same; in 
 this most important respect especially, that they have 
 penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the 
 universe; what Goethe calls ' the open secret.' . . . The 
 Vales Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mys- 
 tery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty 
 and Prohibition ; the Vates Poet on what the Germans call 
 the aesthetic side, as Beautiful and the like," etc. 
 
 Having got his two sub-classes, Carlyle assigns Ma- 
 homet to one, the Prophets, and finally proceeds to a 
 discrimination of him from all the other prophets. 
 
 The method pursued in this essay is followed also in 
 the others of the same group, ' ' On Heroes, ' ' those on 
 Dante, Shakespeare, Odin, etc. In every case the author 
 takes his great man and assigns him to his class, while 
 differentiating him from all other members of that class. 
 The rough scheme of classification thus established is 
 easily tabulated : 
 
 Heroes or Great Men. - 
 
 Divinities Odin 
 
 Prophets Mahomet 
 
 Poets 
 
 te 
 
 kespeare 
 
 ( Dan 
 ( Shal 
 
 Priests (Luther 
 
 I Knox 
 
 ( Johnson 
 
 Men of Letters -j Rousseau 
 
 ( Burns 
 
 Kines \ Cromwell 
 
 ° I Napoleon 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. iS9 
 
 This group of essays is a good illustration of a process 
 common to all such work, — the double process, that is, 
 of discrimination, or individualization, on the one side, 
 and of identification or classification on the other. In 
 them, the emphasis, to be sure, is often on the individual, 
 yet the class is kept in view, and the very title of the 
 series ' ' On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in 
 History, " is in itself an indication of the importance the 
 writer attached to the generalization underlying his treat- 
 ment of the concrete. 
 
 In other cases the process is just as truly involved, 
 though the manifestations of it may not be so appa- 
 rent. 
 
 Examine, for instance, Mr. Morley's essay on Macaulay. 
 It might, from one standpoint, be classed along with 
 Pater's essay on Leonardo da Vinci as an endeavor at an 
 exact estimate of a man. There is, however, some dif- 
 ference of method, or rather of emphasis. 
 
 Almost at the outset the purpose of the essay is stated, 
 as being to discover ' ' what kind of significance or value 
 belongs to Lord Macaulay' s achievements and to what 
 place he has a claim among the forces of English litera- 
 ture. ' ' This gives us, then, the beginning of a classifica- 
 tion: 
 
 Writers who are forces in English Literature Macaulay 
 
 There follows further subdivision of the large class, also 
 rather implied than fully expressed, yet clear enough. 
 Mr. Morley mentions Mill and Carlyle as representa- 
 tives of forces in literature, classifying Carlyle as rather 
 apart because "he is a poet, while the other two are in 
 their degrees serious and argumentative writers, dealing 
 in different ways with the great topics that constitute the 
 
i6o A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 matter and business of daily discussion, ' ' etc. This gives 
 
 us our next grade of classification : 
 
 Writers who are { Poets Carlyle 
 
 forces in English-} Serious and argumentative j Mill 
 Literature ( writers, who have, etc. ( Macaulay 
 
 He next proceeds to discriminate between Mill and 
 
 Macaulay on the basis of their influence upon journalism, 
 
 Mill's influence being, briefly, good, and Macaulay's 
 
 bad, and the next step in classification is made : 
 
 Writers who are, ) o ■ ' < t a j n/fn 
 
 i Serious, j Influence good Mill 
 
 ( etc. ( Influence bad Macaulay 
 
 Leaving classification for a while, the writer now turns to 
 Macaulay as an individual, and seeks out not only the 
 qualities in him in virtue of which he belongs to this class, 
 but also those qualities which make him individual. In 
 this part of the essay, constituting the greatest bulk of it, 
 the method pursued is, of course, generally speaking, the 
 method of interpretative description. From the man's 
 work he gives us the man, but since it is merely with 
 the man as a writer that he is concerned, it is by his 
 writing only that he is judged; and the means of appeal 
 have therefore a much more limited range than in such 
 cases as the essay on Leonardo, or Green's essay, if we 
 may call it so, on Elizabeth. 
 
 By means of concrete illustration, then, his character 
 as a writer is made plain, and we get impressions which 
 might be suggested in a list something like the following: 
 
 He has a genius for narration. 
 
 He talks about interesting people. 
 
 His thought is in line with that of his public. 
 
 He is emphatic. 
 
 He is lucid. 
 
 He is learned. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. l6l 
 
 On the other hand : 
 
 He is commonplace. 
 
 He is overconfident. 
 
 He is untrue. 
 
 He is superficial. 
 
 He is inelastic and narrow. 
 
 He is hard-natured. 
 
 He lacks depth and firmness. 
 
 He is coarse, vulgar, brutal, crude. 
 Having completed this characterization of Macaulay, 
 Mr. Morley returns again to the classification of him (the 
 italics are ours) : 
 
 "This remark is no disparagement of Macaulay's 
 genius, but a classification of it. We are interrogating our 
 own impressions and asking ourselves among what kind 0/ 
 writers he ought to be placed." And following this line 
 of thought Mr. Morley arrives finally at the conclusion 
 that Macaulay was a rhetorician of the second rank. 
 Our final classification, therefore, is this : 
 
 Poets Carlyle 
 
 {Classification ) 
 not elabo- )■ Mill 
 rated ) 
 [ "^st 1 
 Rhetoricians \ ^^J^ 
 
 (.ranki^^^^^^l^y 
 Thus we find that, while in this essay the emphasis on 
 the individual is greater than in Carlyle, yet as in Carlyle 
 there is present the provision for a classification of the 
 individual. The same is true of every such treatise, 
 although naturally the degree of emphasis on the one or 
 the other kind of thing will be infinitely varied. In the 
 essays of Arnold the classification side is usually rather 
 clear. In his essay on Heine he says, " I wish to mark 
 
 Writers who 
 are forces 
 in English 
 Literature. 
 
i62 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 Heine's place in modern European literature, the scope 
 of his activity, and his value. ' ' * That is, he wishes 
 both to characterize and to classify, or — to use the tech- 
 nical terms of definition — to discriminate and to iden- 
 tify. His essay on Wordsworth is an avowed endeavor 
 more justly to classify the poet; so is his essay on Byron; 
 so is that on Shelley, though its attempt is to characterize 
 and classify Shelley as a man rather than as a poet, and 
 although the emphasis is less on the classification than on 
 the characterization, the individualization. 
 
 In connection with the essay on Macaulay, Pater's 
 essay on Leonardo da Vinci was referred to as showing a 
 slight difference of method, ' ' or rather of emphasis. ' ' 
 The difference can now be readily appreciated as being in 
 fact one of emphasis. Pater's delight was less in a dis- 
 covery of those qualities by virtue of which things are 
 grouped in classes than in the delicate, discriminating 
 emphasis on those traits which set them apart from their 
 fellows. And the essay in question, like much of his 
 work, assumes instead of stating a classification, and itself 
 is occupied wholly with what might technically be called 
 the differentia, of the subject: "What is the peculiar 
 sensation, what is the peculiar quality of pleasure, which 
 his work has the property of exciting in us, and which we 
 cannot get elsewhere '> " he continually asks, ' ' For this 
 ... is always the chief question which a critic has to 
 answer. " f And yet even in these essays the explicit 
 classification now and then appears, and in this very 
 commentary on Botticelli, which is so frankly occupied 
 with its inquiry after " peculiar " traits, there may be dis- 
 covered considerable generalization. Botticelli, we hear, 
 
 * Essays in Criticism ; First Series, p. 170. 
 
 f Pater: The Renaissance ; Sandro Botticelli, p. 53. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 163 
 
 was "a poetical painter," "a visionary painter," like 
 Dante in poetry, but he lived in " a generation of natural- 
 ists, " and his contemporaries were " dramatic painters, " * 
 etc. Here is his classification, as clear as was Macaulay's : 
 
 f i7-i,;„-„„. -,»:„._ i Poets Dante 
 
 Artists ^'"°""y ^"'='' 1 Painters Botticelli 
 
 ■ J ("Giotto 
 
 [ Dramatic artists . . Painters \ Masaccio, 
 
 (. etc. 
 
 The question which arose as to the relation between 
 such exposition and the exposition by definition is now 
 answered. Not only do the two have the same end, they 
 use the same method, the method of classification and 
 differentiation; only, whereas in the formal definition the 
 method is immediately apparent, in the cases we have just 
 been considering it is sometimes discernible only after 
 some scrutiny, being obscured by the emphasis placed on 
 the "differentia" of the subject instead of on the 
 "genus." The manner in which the emphasis will fall 
 will vary infinitely, being dependent on the writer's habit 
 of mind, on his purpose, and on the nature of his subject. 
 
 That both processes must be at least implicit in any 
 expository expression follows from the nature of our 
 mental processes. We are aiming to convey what we 
 conceive to be the true nature of a thing. But in reach- 
 ing, ourselves, this perception of its true nature, we must 
 consider something besides the individual thing ; for we 
 do not really know what it is until we know what it is 
 not; we cannot recognize its characteristic traits as 
 characteristic unless we know which traits are not charac- 
 teristic but common to other things as well. We cannot 
 know the individual unless we also know the class. 
 
 Even in the processes of immediate sense-perception — 
 
 * Pater: The Renaissance ; Sandra Botticelli, pp. 54-56. 
 
i64 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY tVRITING. 
 
 and therefore in description as the record of that process 
 — this consciousness of the class is involved, although the 
 emphasis is more consistently upon the individual than 
 anywhere else. In Mr. Burroughs' description of the 
 columbine, for example, there is a recognition of the class 
 as well as of the individual ; indeed, the significance of the 
 passage depends on our perception of contrasts between 
 class and individual. The thought implied is: the col- 
 umbine belongs to that class of flowers which are most 
 exquisitely beautiful. This particular columbine belongs 
 to its class and possesses the class-characteristics, but it 
 also possesses individual characteristics, not shared by all 
 columbines: it is also "magical and audacious." The 
 classification, partly implied, partly expressed, and indis- 
 pensable to the effect of the description, might be repre- 
 sented thus : 
 
 Familiar f 
 
 wild-flowers. Those which 
 
 I are exquisitely 
 
 [beautiful. ) Columbine (" This columbine, 
 
 whose exquisite 
 beauty was fur- 
 ther differenti- 
 ated by being 
 magical and au- 
 dacious. 
 
 A little observation of one's own experience will show 
 how inevitable is this process of classification as an 
 accompaniment of all our sense-perception. In the ex- 
 periment with the poppies, for example, the immediate 
 sense-perception reached a certain stage, and then came 
 the classification of the perception with other remembered 
 perceptions, and along with the thought "poppies" 
 came the memory-supplement of traits known to be 
 common to all members of the class. The simple naming 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 165 
 
 of a thing involves such classification, although it is so 
 rapid and habitual that its nature is no longer recognized. 
 
 On the whole, however, all the writing we have thus 
 far considered, except the formal definition quoted at the 
 beginning of the chapter, is characterized by the fact that, 
 while both processes are involved, it is the discrimination 
 process which is given most scope. The genus is rather 
 assumed, and the attention is invited to the differentia, 
 our faces are set toward the individual. In Carlyle's 
 Heroes this is least true; he looks both ways and it would 
 be hard to say in which direction he looks most con- 
 stantly. From this case it is easy to see how the relative 
 proportion might be reversed, and the emphasis be placed 
 on the genus instead of the individual, on hero-souls 
 instead of on Mahomet and Dante, on rhetoricians instead 
 of on Macaulay, on columbines instead of that columbine 
 ' ' I saw one spring day. ' ' 
 
 Both processes will in such cases still be involved, but 
 instead of assuming the generic qualities and elaborately 
 discussing the individual, we shall assume the individual 
 traits and elaborate the generic. 
 
 Take the case of the columbine. Mr. Burroughs' 
 description would, with a few topographical directions, 
 have enabled us easily to find that particular columbine; 
 but in order to identify any columbine, we should need a 
 different guide. We should want to know not the traits 
 that this columbine alone possessed, but those common 
 to all of its species. Chief of these would be: 
 
 Color: scarlet and yellow. 
 
 Manner of the plant's growth: in clumps, but each 
 flower pendent from its separate stem. 
 
 Shape of the flower : five spurs, protruding stamens, etc. 
 
 Size of the flower : two inches long. 
 
1 66 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 Shape of the leaf: compound, deeply cleft and lobed. 
 Etc., etc. 
 
 Suppose, now, that we wish to be able to recognize not 
 merely this species of columbine Aquilegia Canadensis 
 but any species of the genus, including cultivated va- 
 rieties. 
 
 To begin with, the color-differentia must go, since 
 other species are blue, purple, white, etc; and the size of 
 the flower must have wider range. The traits that char- 
 acterize the genus, then, — keeping so far as possible free 
 from the technical terminology, — may be summed up 
 about as follows : 
 
 Columbines are low herbs growing in delicately massed 
 clumps, with finely cut leaves, and flowers nodding from 
 slender stems. The flowers themselves, varying in color, 
 are from one and a half to three inches long, and look 
 something like a shuttle-cock, with spurs instead of 
 feathers. 
 
 We might elaborate this account, but it is enough to 
 illustrate the method. Such an account of a class of ob- 
 jects, as distinct from a single object, is called " general- 
 ized description. ' ' Its emphasis is the reverse of that in 
 pure description, and, as we have just seen, the means by 
 which it characterizes its subjects are less purely sensuous 
 in their appeal. 
 
 In subjects of greater complexity, the direct appeal to 
 the senses becomes even slighter. Suppose, for example, 
 we are trying to tell a friend how to recognize the orchids 
 at the next flower-show. How shall we do it .? We 
 cannot describe the color, since it varies infinitely; nor 
 the shape, for no two genera are alike, and even the 
 species show great differences; nor the manner of growth, 
 for there is no generally characteristic manner. We 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 167 
 
 perhaps resort to an account of the way the flowers 
 impress us: "Oh, all the orchids are simply queer 
 beyond measure, some of them are positively uncanny. ' ' 
 " Are they any queerer than the cactus ? " he may ask. 
 "Well, — it's a different kind of queerness," we answer, 
 and our next' attempt will be to show just what this 
 "queerness" consists in. Ultimately we may arrive at 
 very much the kind of statement found in Gray's Bot- 
 any, though our phrasing will be less technical; and 
 the general traits which we shall use-to define the orchid 
 family will be those which concern the relation between 
 the parts of the plant and the number of those parts. 
 Stated roughly, our information would run about as 
 follows : 
 
 Orchids are herbs with (usually) showy flowers and 
 inconspicuous leaves. The flowers are irregular, usually 
 striking and ' ' interesting ' ' in either form or color, or 
 both. Their petals and petal-like sepals are each three, 
 but one of the petals is always much modified mto some 
 sort of lip, platform, or bag. The stamens have usually 
 been modified, too, into something that looks like a queei 
 extra petal opposite the lip-petal. The stigma is there, 
 but you usually can't find it. The flowers range over 
 almost all colors, and are often curiously spotted or 
 streaked. 
 
 Shall we call this "generalized description" ? It is 
 not quite like description, because though the sensuous 
 appeal is suggested, it is not definite. What one can 
 describe — ^if it be visual — one can paint, provided one 
 has skill enough. One could paint Mr. Burroughs' 
 columbine, one could paint any given orchid, but one 
 couldn't paint the general notion " orchid " contained in 
 the above account. Neither, indeed, could one paint 
 
1 68 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRIT/NG. 
 
 " columbine," for there could be no color and even the 
 outline would be hazy. 
 
 Perhaps it does not matter whether we call such work 
 " generalized description " or " definition;" our decision 
 will depend on whether we are thinking more of the 
 reminiscence of sense-appeal still lurking in the generaliza- 
 tions or more of the method, which is, of course, exactly 
 the same as in formal definition. How vivid will be the 
 sense -reminiscence in the traits adduced will depend upon 
 the range of variation in the subject ; thus any genus of 
 orchid would probably permit less than any genus of 
 columbine. The range of variation in the subject will 
 depend partly upon how far removed it is from the con- 
 crete individual ; thus, we can describe a particular 
 tortoise-shell cat, we can give a generalized description 
 of tortoise-shell cats, still with considerable sensuous 
 appeal; when we pass to a generalized description — or 
 must we call it a definition ? — of the species cat [Feh's 
 domestica) we cut loose from appeal to the senses, and 
 rely upon perception of relation of parts; if we deal with 
 the whole genus felis or the family Felida, our means 
 grow more and more abstract. 
 
 Informal definition of this kind often has to resort to 
 another means besides this of generalized description. 
 Suppose, for example, one wants to tell some one just 
 what a game of basket-ball is like, or a set of tennis, or 
 an afternoon of golfing. The case resembles that of the 
 orchids, or the columbines, in that while all games of 
 basket-ball have certain common traits, no two games are 
 exactly alike. But there is a difference in the fact that 
 even any single game does not stay still to be described, 
 it keeps doing things, and in what it does consists its 
 character. In telling what the game is, then, we shall 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 169 
 
 resort to ' ' generalized narration, ' ' which of course stands 
 in the same relation to narration that generalized descrip- 
 tion does to description. It is mentioned here, because, 
 though with subject-matter different from that of descrip- 
 tion, it meets description in the field of definition, and 
 becomes an important factor of definition whenever the 
 subject treated is one of processes, of things in activity 
 instead of things in repose. 
 
 Much that has been said in connection with the process 
 of definition is well illustrated by the first chapter of 
 Mr. Lloyd Morgan's Animal Life and Intelligence, in which 
 he begins with the scrappy attempts of some schoolboys 
 at defining " an animal; " and with these as his basis, 
 works out a complete definition, though not reduced to 
 formal statement, of the animal organism as one class of 
 living beings. The passage is cited here especially as an 
 example of method. 
 
 " I once asked a class of schoolboys to write down for 
 me in a few words what they considered the chief charac- 
 teristics of animals. Here are some of the answers: 
 
 " I. Animals move about, eat and grow. 
 
 " 2. Animals eat, grow, breathe, feel (at least most of 
 them do), and sleep. 
 
 " 3. Take a cat, for example. It begins as a kitten; 
 it eats, drinks, plays about, and grows up into a cat, 
 which does much the same, only it is more lazy, and stops 
 growing. At last it grows old and dies. But it may 
 have kittens first. 
 
 "4. An animal has a head and tail, four legs, and a 
 body. It is a living creature and not a vegetable. 
 
 " 5. Animals are living creatures, made of flesh and 
 blood. 
 
17° A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 Combining these statements, Mr. Morgan has the 
 following characteristics of animals : 
 
 " I. Each has a proper and definite form, at present 
 described as a head and tail, four legs, and a body. 
 
 2. They breathe. 
 
 3. They eat and drink. 
 
 4. They grow. 
 
 5. They also 'grow up.' The kitten grows into a 
 cat which is somewhat different from a kitten. 
 
 6. They move about and sleep. 
 
 7. They feel — ' at least some of them do.' 
 
 8. They are made of ' flesh and blood. ' 
 
 9. They grow old and die. 
 
 10. They reproduce their kind. The cat may have 
 kittens. 
 
 "11. They are living organisms, but 'not vege- 
 tables.' " 
 
 This is raw material for a definition of ''animal." 
 Not quite "raw," indeed, but in an intermediate stage 
 between perception of individual animals and knowledge 
 of their common qualities. Mr. Morgan proceeds to sift 
 his material and correct the results : 
 
 " I. An animal has a definite form. My schoolboy 
 friend described it as a head and tail, four legs, and a 
 body. But it is clear that this description applies only 
 to a very limited number of animals. It will not apply 
 to the butterfly, . . . nor to the lobster, ... to the 
 limbless snake and worm . . . but ... we may say 
 that each animal has a definite form and shape or series 
 of shapes. ' ' 
 
 The statement that animals are made of ' flesh and 
 blood ' is found to need modification, thus: 
 
 " An American is said to have described the difference 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 171 
 
 between vertebrates and insects by saying that the former 
 are composed of fiesh and bones, and the latter of skin 
 and squash. But even if we amend the statement that 
 animals are made of ' flesh and blood ' by the addition of 
 the words, ' or of skin and squash, ' we shall hardly have 
 a sufficiently satisfactory statement of the composition of 
 the animal body. ' ' 
 
 After some discussion, therefore, Mr. Morgan modifies 
 these statements and reaches the conclusion ' ' that the 
 living substance of which animals are composed is a com- 
 plex material called protoplasm, ' ' etc. 
 
 The result of the chapter is a complete definition of 
 animals as distinct from vegetables, and a classfication 01 
 both under the class living organisms; this class being in 
 turn, somewhat less explicitly, distinguished from in- 
 organic, or dead, matter. The definition, though not 
 reduced to form, is in close agreement with that given at 
 the beginning of the chapter, only its terms are explained, 
 and their remote significance made clear. 
 
 The great bulk of so-called " scientific " writing can be 
 thus reduced to definition, with the difference just stated, 
 that what in the formal definition is put as tersely as 
 possible, is in the treatise elaborately explained. 
 
 What holds good of our method in arriving at our 
 notions of classes, holds also of all other abstract notions. 
 They are gained by noting a common feature in a number 
 of concrete instances and giving to this common feature a 
 name. The notion "honor" is gained by noting in a 
 number of acts a common quality, which we call honor- 
 ableness, and from which we infer a corresponding 
 quality, called sense of honor, or simply honor, in the 
 persons who do the act. The same is true of all such 
 terms,— "courtesy," "beauty," "activity," etc. A 
 
172 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 proof that the order really is from concrete to abstract is 
 found in the fact that primitive languages are poor in 
 abstract terms, or are nearly lacking in them. They may, 
 for example, possess names for various kinds of trees, 
 which shows some advance in power to generalize, but 
 not for "tree"; names for various kinds of motion — 
 running, walking, leaping, dancing, — but not for 
 "motion," "movement," "activity." After such ab- 
 stract notions are once apprehended, there comes a time 
 when, along with the sense of their value, there arises a 
 desire to test and refine them. This is done by the same 
 double method that characterizes all our search for knowl- 
 edge, and the endeavor to communicate our results to 
 others finds expression in either condensed definitions, or 
 the more natural and therefore more interesting and suc- 
 cessful expositions which follow the method of definition 
 — they can follow no other — but deviate from its set form 
 and studied conciseness. We may have the " dictionary " 
 definition of honor: " a nice sense of what is right, just, 
 and true, with course of life correspondent thereto" — 
 or it may be less formal : 
 
 Say, what is honor? — 'Tis the finest sense 
 Oi justice which the human mind can frame, 
 Intent each lurking frailty to reclaim, 
 And guard the way of life from all offence 
 Suffered or done.* 
 
 or it may be comic in intention, like Falstaff's definition: 
 "What is honor.? a word. What is in that word 
 honor? What is that honor.? air. A trim reckoning! 
 Who hath it ? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel 
 it ? no. Doth he hear it .? no. 'Tis insensible then ? 
 
 * Wordsworth. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS REL/1TION TO EXPOSITION. 173 
 
 yea; to the dead. But will it not live with the living? 
 no. Why ? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll 
 none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon; and so ends my 
 catechism. ' ' * 
 
 For poetry, we may cite Arnold's " Poetry is simply 
 the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode 
 of saying things; " f where the two elements of definition 
 are plainer than in that of culture as " a study of perfec- 
 tion. ' ' J This last definition is not merely given in a 
 phrase, it is elaborated into an essay § in which each word 
 of the definition is in turn expounded somewhat as 
 follows : 
 
 Culture is a study of perfection. 
 
 Study is [ love, "1 ....perfection. 
 
 desire I 
 to make [ 
 prevail, J 
 
 Perfection is ( sweetness, 
 
 light. 
 
 Sweetness is etc. 
 
 Light is etc. 
 
 and so on, until all the notions inherent in the first phrase 
 have been discovered to the reader. 
 
 Furthermore, as in the earlier expository essays on 
 writers, artists, etc. , we found that the relative emphasis 
 on classification or discrimination was infinitely varied ; 
 so, in all definition, formal or informal, the emphasis will 
 vary according to the subject and the purpose. A large 
 amount of expository writing concerns itself especially 
 with discrimination, not as in the cases previously con- 
 
 * /. Henry IV, V, i. 
 
 f Arnold: Essays in Criticism ; First Series ; Heinrich Heine, 
 p. 161. 
 
 % Arnold: Culture and Anarchy, p. 7. 
 
 8 Arnold: Culture and Anarchy, Chap. I. 
 
174 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 sidered, of one individual from the mass of all others, but 
 of one thing — be it individual or class, concrete or 
 abstract — from another thing. Offen the most effective 
 way of showing the real nature of anything is by placing 
 it beside some other thing not too dissimilar and noting 
 the differences and resemblances. The value of this is 
 especially well illustrated in cases where the true nature 
 of the thing treated is still not quite comprehended, as, 
 for instance, the terms "instinct" and "reason." 
 Romanes' Animal Intelligence is an attempt at discrimina- 
 tion through the citing of concrete instances. He prefaces 
 the attempt by definition of the two terms, discriminating 
 them, the one from the other : 
 
 " Instinct is reflex action into which there is imported 
 the element of consciousnesss. The term is therefore a 
 generic one, comprising all those faculties of mind which 
 are concerned in conscious and adaptive action, antece- 
 dent to individual experience, without necessary knowledge 
 of the relation between the means employed. 
 
 " Reason or intelligence is the faculty which is con- 
 cerned in the intentional adaptation of means to ends. 
 It therefore implies conscious knowledge of the relation 
 between means employed and ends attained, and may be 
 exercised in adaptation to circumstances novel alike to 
 the experience of the individual and to that of the 
 species. ' ' * 
 
 Mr. Lloyd Morgan works in a similar way toward the 
 true discrimination of instinct and reason. Confronted 
 with the necessity of defining "the power of individual 
 choice," he does it by discriminating choice from neces- 
 sity in a number of concrete instances : 
 
 "Two weathercocks are placed on adjoining church 
 * Romanes: Animal Intelligence, p. 17. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. I75 
 
 pinnacles, two clouds are floating across the sky, two 
 empty bottles are drifting down a stream. None of these 
 has any power of individual choice. They are completely 
 at the mercy of external circumstances. On the other 
 hand, two dogs are trotting down the road and come to 
 a point of divergence; one goes to the right hand, the 
 other to the left hand. Here each exercises a power of 
 individual choice as to which way he shall go. Or, 
 again, my brother and I are out for a walk and our 
 father's dog is with us. After a while we part, each to 
 proceed on his own way. Pincher stands irresolute. For 
 a while the impulse to follow me and the impulse to 
 follow my brother are equal. Then the former impulse 
 prevails and he bounds to my side. He has exercised the 
 power of individual choice. ' ' * 
 
 Similarly, fancy and imagination, wit and humor, humor 
 and satire are profitably treated in pairs, the discrimina- 
 tion being expressed in a phrase or an essay or a volume. 
 A number of such discriminations are expressed by means 
 of symbolic description in the following passage : 
 
 ' ' You may estimate your capacity for comic perception 
 by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, 
 without loving them less : and more by being able to see 
 yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes and accepting 
 the correction their image of you proposes. 
 
 "If you detect the ridicule and your kindliness is 
 chilled by it, you are slipping into the grasp of Satire. 
 
 " If, instead of falling foul of the ridiculous person with 
 a satiric rod to make him writhe and shriek aloud, you 
 prefer to sting him under a semi-caress by which he shall 
 in his anguish be rendered dubious whether indeed any- 
 thing has hurt him, you are the engine of Irony. 
 
 * Lloyd Morgan: Animal Life and Intelligence, pp. 458-9. 
 
176 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 " If you laugh all round him, tumble him, roll him 
 about, deal him a smack and drop a tear on him, own 
 his likeness to you and yours to your neighbor, spare him 
 as little as you shun, pity him as much as you expose, it 
 IS a spirit of Humor that is moving you. " * 
 
 Such discrimination is, of course, involved in all exposi- 
 tory work ; it is only emphasis that decides whether its 
 name shall be given to the whole bit of writing. 
 
 The same is true of another kind of work called 
 ' ' division. ' ' This, as its name implies, is simply a 
 process of dividing up any class of things so that the 
 things contained in it shall fall into groups according to 
 some determined principle. Thus, we may divide cats 
 into male and female or into domesticated and wild, or 
 into cats that are all of one color and cats that are party- 
 colored, etc., according to what our purpose is in treat- 
 ing cats. The only necessary condition is that the 
 criterion of division shall be the same for all the groups 
 under the class — ^that we shall not, for example, divide 
 cats into party-colored cats and domesticated cats, f 
 
 * Meredith: Essay on Comedy, pp. 72-4. 
 
 t A lecturer on the sculptures of the Medici chapel divided 
 them as follows: 
 
 I. Allegorical. 2. Sedentary. 
 
 And a school-girl a short time ago handed to her teacher the 
 following analysis, embodying her division of the chosen sub-" 
 ject; 
 
 One of my Friends. 
 
 I. Her height. III. Her dressing, 
 
 1. Her complexion. i. Her ways. 
 
 2. Her hair. 2. Her voice. 
 II. Her age. IV. Her walk. 
 
 1. Her teeth. I. Her legs. 
 
 2. Her hands. ^. Her religion. 
 
 The title of the Massachusetts " State Board of Health, 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS REMTION TO EXPOSITION. 177 
 
 This process, of course, is involved in definition, for it 
 is a step toward determining just what a class is, if we 
 determine how its constituent members may be grouped, 
 while the ascertaining of good principles of grouping will 
 be of great assistance in the detailed investigation of the 
 constituency. The process of division is exemplified in a 
 number of the cases discussed in this chapter. It is 
 suggested, though not really worked out in Carlyle's 
 classes of heroes, in Mr. Morley's hinted division of in- 
 fluential writers into poets and argumentative writers, and 
 in Pater's visionary artists and dramatic artists. It is the 
 chief value of systematic botany and is indeed the back- 
 bone of much scientific exposition. 
 
 LESSON XVI. 
 
 1. (a) Write a description of a Norway spruce, trying 
 
 to individualize it as much as you can. 
 (3) Write a generalized description of the spruce. 
 
 2. Compare the result with Ruskin's exposition of the 
 ' ' pine-tree. ' ' * 
 
 " Of the many marked adaptations of nature to the mind 
 of man, it seems one of the most singular, that trees 
 intended especially for the adornment of the wildest 
 mountains should be in broad outline the most formal of 
 trees. The vine, which is to be the companion of man, 
 is waywardly docile in its growth, falling into festoons 
 beside his cornfields, or roofing his garden-walks, or cast- 
 ing its shadow all summer upon his door. Associated 
 always with the trimness of cultivation, it introduces all 
 
 Lunacy, and Charity," is not above criticism. At least, its 
 phrasing is scarcely happy. 
 
 * In the passage quoted he uses the generic term " pine,'' 
 but in the context he defines his subject as the Norway spruce. 
 
178 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY iVRITING. 
 
 possible elements of sweet wildness. The pine, placed 
 nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, 
 brings into them all possible elements of order and pre- 
 cision. Lowland trees may lean to this side and that, 
 though it is but a meadow breeze that bends them, or a 
 bank of cowslips from which their trunks lean aslope. 
 But let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the 
 pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it 
 will nevertheless grow straight. Thrust a rod from its 
 last shoot down the stem; — it shall point to the center of 
 the earth as long as the tree lives. 
 
 " Also it may be well for lowland branches to reach 
 hither and thither for what they need, and to take all 
 kinds of irregular shape and extension. But the pine is 
 trained to need nothing, and to endure everything. It is 
 resolvedly whole, self-contained, desiring nothing but 
 Tightness, content with restricted completion. Tall or 
 short, it will be straight. Small or large, it will be round. 
 It may be permitted also to these soft lowland trees that 
 they should make themselves gay with show of blossom, 
 and glad with pretty charities of fruitfulness. We builders 
 with the sword have harder work to do for man, and must 
 do it in close-set troops. To stay the sliding of the 
 mountain snows, which would bury him; to hold in 
 divided drops, at our sword-points, the rain, which would 
 sweep away him and his treasure-fields; to nurse in shade 
 among our brown fallen leaves the tricklings that feed the 
 brooks in drought; to give massive shield against the 
 winter wind, which shrieks through the bare branches of 
 the plain : — such service must we do him steadfastly while 
 we live. Our bodies, also, are at his service : softer than 
 the bodies of other trees, though our toil is harder than 
 theirs. Let him take them as pleases him, for his houses 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. I79 
 
 and ships. So also it may be well for these timid lowland 
 trees to tremble with all their leaves, or turn their paleness 
 to the sky, if but a rush of rain passes by them ; or to let 
 fall their leaves at last, sick and sere. But we pines must 
 live carelessly amidst the wrath of clouds. We only wave 
 our branches to and fro when the storm pleads with us, 
 as men toss their arms in a dream. 
 
 "And finally, these weak lowland trees may struggle 
 fondly for the last remnants of life, and send up feeble 
 saplings again from their roots when they are cut down. 
 But we builders with the sword perish boldly; our dying 
 shall be perfect and solemn, as our warring : we give up 
 our lives without reluctance, and for ever.* 
 
 ' ' I wish the reader to fix his attention for a moment on 
 these two great characters of the pine, its straightness and 
 rounded perfectness; both wonderful, and in their issue 
 lovely, though they have hitherto prevented the tree from 
 being drawn. I say, first, its straightness. Because we 
 constantly see it in the wildest scenery, we are apt to re- 
 member only as characteristic examples of it those which 
 have been disturbed by violent accident or disease. Of 
 course such instances are frequent. The soil of the pine 
 is subject to continual change; perhaps the rock in which 
 it is rooted splits in frost and falls forward, throwing the 
 young stems aslope, or the whole mass of earth around it 
 is undermined by rain, or a huge bowlder falls on its stem 
 from above, and forces it for twenty years to grow with 
 weight of a couple of tons leaning on its side. Hence, 
 especially at edges of loose cliffs, about waterfalls, or at 
 
 * " Croesus therefore, having heard these things, sent word 
 to the people of Lampsacus that they should let Miltiades go ; 
 and, if not, he would cut them down like a pine tree." — Herod. 
 
 VI, 37. 
 
i8o A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 glacier banks, and in other places liable to disturbance, 
 the pine may be seen distorted and oblique; and in 
 Turner's Source of the Arveron, he has, with his usual 
 unerring perception of the main point in any matter, 
 fastened on this means of relating the glacier's history. 
 The glacier can not explain its own motion ; and ordinary 
 observers saw in it only its rigidity; but Turner saw that 
 the wonderful thing was its non-rigidity. Other ice is 
 fixed, only this ice stirs. All the banks are staggering 
 beneath its waves, crumbling and withered as by the blast 
 of a perpetual storm. He made the rocks of his fore- 
 ground loose — rolling and tottering down together; the 
 pines, smitten aside by them, their tops dead, bared by 
 the ice wind. 
 
 ' ' Nevertheless, this is not the truest or universal ex- 
 pression of the pine's character. I said long ago, even of 
 Turner : ' Into the spirit of the pine he can not enter. ' 
 He understood the glacier at once; he had seen the force 
 of sea on shore too often to miss the action of those 
 crystal-crested waves. But the pine was strange to him, 
 adverse to his delight in broad and flowing line; he 
 refused its magnificent erectness. Magnificent! — nay, 
 sometimes, almost terrible. Other trees, tufting crag or 
 hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground, clothe it 
 with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its 
 flatterers, partly its comforters. But the pine rises in 
 serene resistance, self-contained; nor can I ever without 
 awe stay long under a great Alpine cliff, far from all 
 house or work of men, looking up to its companies of 
 pine, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and perilous 
 ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each 
 like the shadow of the one beside it — upright, fixed, 
 spectral, as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. i8i 
 
 Hades, not knowing each other — dumb forever. You 
 can not reach them, can not cry to them ; — those trees 
 never heard human voice; they are far above all sound 
 but of the winds. No foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. 
 All comfortless they stand, between the two eternities of 
 the Vacancy and the Rock : yet with such iron will, that 
 the rock itself looks bent and shattered beside them — 
 fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared to their dark energy 
 of delicate life, and monotony of enchanted pride: — 
 unnumbered, unconquerable. 
 
 ' ' Then note, farther, their perfectness. The impres- 
 sion on most people's minds must have been received 
 more from pictures than reality, so far as I can judge; — 
 so ragged they think the pine ; whereas its chief character 
 in health is green and full roundness. It stands compact, 
 like one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, 
 finished and quaint as a carved tree in some Elizabethan 
 garden; and instead of being wild in expression, forms 
 the softest of all forest scenery; for other trees show their 
 trunks and twisting boughs: but the pine, growing either 
 in luxuriant mass or in happy isolation, allows no branch 
 to be seen. Summit behind summit rise its pyramidal 
 ranges, or down to the very grass sweep the circlets of its 
 boughs; so that there is nothing but green cone and green 
 carpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one sense more 
 cheerful than other foliage; for it casts only a pyramidal 
 shadow. Lowland forest arches overhead, and checkers 
 the ground with darkness; but the pine, growing in 
 scattered groups, leaves the glades between emerald- 
 bright. Its gloom is all its own ; narrowing into the sky, 
 it lets the sunshine strike down to the dew. And if ever 
 a superstitious feeling comes over me among the pine- 
 glades, it is never tainted with the old German forest fear; 
 
1 82 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 but is only a more solemn tone of the fairy enchantment 
 that haunts our English meadows; so that I have always 
 called the prettiest pine-glade in Chamouni, Fairies' 
 Hollow. ' It is in the glen beneath the steep ascent above 
 Pont Pelissier, and may be reached by a little winding 
 path which goes down from the top of the hill ; being, 
 indeed, not truly a glen, but a broad ledge of moss and 
 turf, leaning in a formidable precipice (which, however, 
 the gentle branches hide) over the Arve. An almost 
 isolated rock promontory, many-colored, rises at the end 
 of it. On the other sides it is bordered by cliffs, from 
 which a little cascade falls, literally down among the pines, 
 for it is so light, shaking itself into mere showers of seed 
 pearl in the sun, that the pines don't know it from mist, 
 and grow through it without minding. Underneath, there 
 is only the mossy silence, and above, forever, the snow 
 of the nameless Aiguille. 
 
 ' ' And then the third character which I want you to 
 notice in the pine is its exquisite fineness. Other trees 
 rise against the sky in dots and knots, but this in fringes.* 
 You never see the edges of it, so subtle are they; and for 
 this reason, it alone of trees, so far as I know, is capable 
 of the fiery change which we saw before had been noticed 
 by Shakespeare. When the sun rises behind a ridge 
 crested with pine, provided the ridge be at a distance of 
 about two miles, and seen clear, all the trees, for about 
 three or four degrees on each side of the sun, become 
 
 * Keats (as is his way) puts nearly all that may be said of 
 the pine into one verse, though they are only figurative pines 
 of which he is speaking. I have come to that pass of admira- 
 tion for him now, that I dare not read him, so discontented he 
 makes me with my own wo'rk: but others must not leave un- 
 read, in considering the influence of trees upon the human 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 183 
 
 trees of light, seen in clear flame against the darker 
 sky, and dazzling as the sun itself. I thought at first 
 this was owing to the actual luster of the leaves; but I 
 believe now it is caused by the cloud-dew upon them, — 
 every minutest leaf carrying its diamond. It seems as if 
 these trees, living always among the clouds, had caught 
 part of their glory from them; and themselves the 
 darkest of vegetation, could yet add splendor to the sun 
 itself. 
 
 ' ' Yet I have been more struck by their character of 
 finished delicacy at a distance from the central Alps, 
 among the pastoral hills of the Emmenthal, or lowland 
 districts of Berne, where they are set in groups between 
 the cottages, whose shingle roofs (they also of pine) of 
 deep gray blue, and lightly carved fronts, golden and 
 
 soul, that marvelous ode to Psyche. Here is the piece about 
 pines: — 
 
 " Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane 
 In some untrodden region of my mind, 
 
 Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, 
 Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind: 
 Far, far around shall those dark-clustered trees 
 Fledge the wild-ridged mountains, steep by steep; 
 And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, 
 The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep; 
 And in the midst of this wide quietness 
 A rosy sanctuary will I dress 
 With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain, 
 With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, 
 With all the Gardener Fancy e'er could feign, 
 Who. breeding flowers, will never breed the same. 
 And there shall be for thee all soft delight 
 That shadowy thought can win; 
 A bright torch, and a casement ope, at night, 
 To let the warm Love in." 
 
1 84 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 orange in the autumn sunshine,* gleam on the banks and 
 lawns of hill-side,- — endless lawns, mounded, and studded, 
 and bossed all over with deeper green hay-heaps, orderly 
 set, like jewelry (the mountain hay, when the pastures 
 are full of springs, being strangely dark and fresh in 
 verdure for a whole day after it is cut). And amidst this 
 delicate delight of cottage and field, the young pines 
 stand delicatest of all, scented as with frankincense, their 
 slender stems straight as arrows, and crystal white, look- 
 ing as if they would break with a touch, like needles; and 
 their arabesques of dark leaf pierced through and through 
 by the pale radiance of clear sky, opal blue, where they 
 follow each other along the soft hill-ridges, up and down. 
 " 1 have watched them in such scenes with the deeper 
 interest, because of all trees they have hitherto had most 
 influence on human character. The effect of other vege- 
 tation, however great, has been divided by mingled spe- 
 cies; elm and oak in England, poplar in France, birch 
 in Scotland, olive in Italy and Spain, share their power 
 with inferior trees, and with all the changing charm of 
 successive agriculture. But the tremendous unity of the 
 pine absorbs and molds the life of a race. The pine 
 shadows rest upon a nation. The Northern peoples, 
 century after century, lived under one or other of the two 
 great powers of the Pine and the Sea, both infinite. They 
 dwelt amidst the forests, as they wandered on the waves, 
 and saw no end, nor any other horizon; — still the dark 
 green trees, or the dark green waters, jagged the dawn 
 with their fringe, or their foam. And whatever elements 
 
 * There has been much cottage-building about the hills 
 lately, with very pretty carving, the skill in which has been 
 encouraged by travelers; and the fresh-cut larch is splendid 
 in color under rosy sunlight. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 185 
 
 of imagination, or of warrior strength, or of domestic 
 justice, were brought down by the Norwegian and the 
 Goth against the dissoluteness or degradation of the South 
 of Europe, were taught them under the green roofs and 
 wild penetralia of the pine. ' ' * 
 
 In what relation does the first paragraph stand to the 
 rest of the passage ? Give its main thought in a sentence. 
 How is the method of contrast used to bring out the 
 thought ? In what relation does the first sentence stand 
 to the paragraph ? 
 
 What is the theme of the second paragraph ? Does 
 the first part of the paragraph through " small or large it 
 will be round," really belong to this or to the first para- 
 graph .? Defend your answer. Try to improve the ar- 
 rangement of material in these first three paragraphs. 
 
 By what means does the fourth paragraph " fix the 
 attention " of the, reader on the straightness of the pine ? 
 What is its immediate theme and by what method does it 
 enforce this ? 
 
 How does the fifth paragraph deepen the impression 
 of " straightness?" Is this done by mere reiteration.'' 
 How does the description of Ruskin's own feeling help 
 to interpret the pine itself ? 
 
 In the sixth paragraph analyze the growth of the 
 thought. What is the value of the concrete description 
 at the end ? Criticise this description by itself, after 
 considering whether it leaves a satisfactory impression 
 upon you ? 
 
 Do the next two paragraphs read as easily as the 
 others ? If not, can you discover the reason in their 
 plan ? 
 
 Are the final phrases, ' ' green roofs ' ' and ' ' wild pene- 
 
 * Ruskin : Modern Painters, Part VI, Chap. IX. 
 
1 86 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 tralia, " in harmony with the total impression you have 
 gained ? Compare especially the sixth paragraph. 
 
 How much of Ruskin's exposition could be embodied 
 in a painting ? 
 
 3. " Every traveler going south from St. Louis can 
 recall the average Arkansas village in winter. Little 
 strings of houses spread raggedly on both sides of the 
 rails. A few wee shops, that are likely to have a mock 
 rectangle of facade stuck against a triangle of roof, in the 
 manner of children's card houses, parade a draggled stock 
 of haberdashery and groceries. To right or left a mill 
 buzzes, its newness attested by the raw tints of the 
 weather boarding. There is no horizon; there seldom is 
 a horizon in Arkansas, — it is cut off by the forest. Pools 
 of water reflect the straight black lines of tree-trunks and 
 the crooked lines of bare boughs, while a muddy road 
 winds through the vista. Generally there are a few lean 
 cattle to stare in a dejected fashion at the train, and some 
 fat black swine to root among the sodden grasses. Bales 
 of cotton are piled on the railway platform, and serve as 
 seats for half a dozen listless men in high boots and soft 
 hats. Occasionally a woman, who has not had the time 
 to brush her hair, calls shrilly to some child who is trying 
 to have pneumonia by sitting on the ground. No one 
 seems to have anything to do, yet every one looks tired, 
 and the passenger in the Pullman wonders how people 
 live in 'such a hole. ' " * 
 
 What is the general impression left by the description .' 
 Is it explicitly stated ? What are the means chosen to 
 emphasize it ? 
 
 4. Would a regrouping of its elements make the fol- 
 
 * Octave Thanet. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 187 
 
 lowing passage easier reading ? Examine, among other 
 things, the paragraphing. What stage has been reached 
 in the perception of the rooms ? Are the earlier stages 
 represented ? 
 
 " If the Old Lady is a -widow and lives alone, the 
 manners of her condition and time of life are so much the 
 more apparent. She generally dresses in plain silks, that 
 make a gentle rustling as she moves about the silence of 
 her room; and she wears a nice cap with a lace border, 
 that comes under the chin. In a placket at her side is an 
 old enameled watch, unless it is locked up in a drawer of 
 her toilet, for fear of accidents. Her waist is rather tight 
 and trim than otherwise, as she had a fine one when 
 young; and she is not sorry if you see a pair of her stock- 
 ings on a table, that you may be aware of the neatness of 
 her leg and foot. Contented with these and other evident 
 indications of a good shape, and letting her young friends 
 understand that she can afford to obscure it a little, she 
 wears pockets, and uses them well too. In the one is her 
 handkerchief, and any heavier matter that is not likely to 
 come out with it, such as the change of a sixpence; in 
 the other is a miscellaneous assortment, consisting of a 
 pocketbook, a bunch of keys, a needle-case, a spectacle- 
 case, crumbs of biscuit, a nutmeg and grater, a smelling- 
 bottle, and, according to the season, an orange or apple, 
 which after many days she draws out, warm and glossy, 
 to give to some little child that has well behaved itself 
 She generally occupies two rooms, in the neatest condition 
 possible. In the chamber is a bed with a white coverlet, 
 built up high and round, to look well, and with curtains 
 of a pastoral pattern, consisting alternately of large plants, 
 and shepherds and shepherdesses. On the mantelpiece 
 are more shepherds and shepherdesses, with dot-eyed 
 
i88 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 sheep at their feet, all in colored ware ; the man, perhaps, 
 in a pink jacket and knots of ribbons at his knees and 
 shoes, holding his crook lightly in one hand, and with the 
 other at his breast, turning his toes out and looking ten- 
 derly at the shepherdess : the woman holding a crook also, 
 and modestly returning his look, with a gypsy-hat jerked 
 up behind, a very slender waist, with petticoat and hips 
 to counteract, and the petticoat pulled up through the 
 pocket-holes, in order to show the trimness of her ankles. 
 But these patterns, of course, are various. The toilet is 
 ancient, carved at the edges, and tied about with a snow- 
 white drapery of muslin. Beside it are various boxes, 
 mostly japan; and the set of drawers are exquisite things 
 for a little girl to rummage, if ever little girl be so bold, 
 — containing ribbons and laces of various kinds; linen 
 smelling of lavender, of the flowers of which there is 
 always dust in the corners; a heap of pocketbooks for a 
 series of years; and pieces of dress long gone by, such as 
 head-fronts, stomachers, and flowered satin shoes, with 
 enormous heels. The stock of letters are under especial 
 lock and key. So much for the bedroom. In the 
 sitting-room is rather a spare assortment of shining old 
 mahogany furniture, or carved armchairs equally old, 
 with chintz draperies down to the ground; a folding or 
 other screen, with Chinese figures, their round, little-eyed, 
 meek faces perking sideways; a stuffed bird, perhaps in a 
 glass case (a living one is too much for her) ; a portrait 
 of her husband over the mantelpiece, in a coat with 
 frog-buttons, and a delicate frilled hand lightly inserted 
 in the waistcoat; and opposite him on the wall is a piece 
 of embroidered literature, framed and glazed, containing 
 some moral distich or maxim, worked in angular capital 
 letters, with two trees or parrots below, in their proper 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 189 
 
 colors; the whole concluding with an ABC and numerals; 
 and the name of the fair industrious, expressing it to be 
 'her work, Jan. 14, 1762.' The rest of the furniture 
 consists of a looking-glass with carved edges, perhaps a 
 settee, a hassock for the feet, a mat for the little dog, and 
 a small set of shelves, in which are the Spectator and 
 Guardian, the Turkish Spy, 2l Bible and Prayer Book, 
 Young's Night Thoughts with a piece of lace in it to 
 flatten, Mrs. Rowe's Devout Exercises of the Heart, Mrs. 
 Glasse's Cookery, and perhaps Sir Charles Grandison and 
 Clarissa. John Buncle is in the closet among the pickles 
 and preserves. The clock is on the landing-place between 
 the two room doors, where it ticks audibly but quietly; 
 and the landing-place, as well as the stairs, is carpeted to 
 a nicety. The house is most in character, and properly 
 coeval, if it is in a retired suburb, and strongly built, with 
 wainscot rather than paper inside, and Ibckers in the 
 windows. Before the windows should be some quivering 
 poplars. Here the Old Lady receives a few quiet visitors 
 to tea, and perhaps an early game at cards; or you may 
 see her going out on the same kind of a visit herself, with 
 a light umbrella running up into a stick and crooked ivory 
 handle, and her little dog, equally famous for his love to 
 her and captious antipathy to strangers. Her grand- 
 children dislike him on holidays, and the boldest some- 
 times ventures to give him a sly kick under the table. 
 When she returns at night, she appears, if the weather 
 happens to be doubtful, in a calash; and her servant in 
 pattens, follows half behind and half at her side, with a 
 lantern. 
 
 ' ' Her opinions are not many nor new. She thinks the 
 clergyman a nice man. The Duke of Wellington, in her 
 
19° A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 opinion, is a very great man; but she has a secret prefer- 
 ence for the Marquis of Granby. She thinks the young 
 women of the present day too forward, and the men not 
 respectful enough; but hopes her grandchildren will be 
 better; though she differs with her daughter in several 
 points respecting their management. She sets little value 
 on the new accomplishments; is a great though delicate 
 connoisseur in butcher's meat and all sorts of housewifery; 
 and if you mention waltzes, expatiates on the grace and 
 fine breeding of the minuet. She longs to have seen one 
 danced by Sir Charles Grandison, whom she almost con- 
 siders as a real person. She likes a walk of a summer's 
 evenmg, but avoids the new streets, canals, etc., and 
 sometimes goes through the church-yard, where her 
 children and her husband lie buried, serious, but not 
 melancholy. She has had three great epochs in her life : 
 — her marriage — her having been at court, to see the King 
 and Queen and Royal Family — and a compliment on her 
 figure she once received, in passing, from Mr. Wilkes, 
 whom she describes as a sad, loose man, but engaging. 
 His plainness she thinks much exaggerated. If anything 
 takes her at a distance from home, it is still the court ; 
 but she seldom stirs, even for that. The last time but 
 one that she went, was to see the Duke of Wirtemberg ; 
 and most probably for the last time of all, to see the 
 Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. From this beatific 
 vision she returned with the same admiration as ever for 
 the fine comely appearance of the Duke of York and the 
 rest of the family, and great delight at havmg had a near 
 view of the Princess, whom she speaks of with smiling 
 pomp and lifted mittens, clasping them as passionately as 
 she can together, and calling her, in a transport of mixed 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 191 
 
 loyalty and self-love, a fine royal young creature, and 
 ' Daughter of England. ' " * 
 
 5. " The parlor of middle-class households in the cold 
 climate of the Northern states generally is a consecrated 
 apartment, with a chill atmosphere and much of the 
 solemnity of a tomb. It may be called the high altar of 
 the careful housewife; but even here her sense of clean- 
 liness and dustless perfection is such that she keeps it cold. 
 No sacred fire burns, no cheerful ministry is allowed; 
 everything is silent and veiled. The apartment is of no 
 earthly use. . . . But take it..away, and the housewife is 
 miserable; leave it, and she lives on contentedly in her 
 sitting-room all the year round, knowing it is there." \ 
 
 Compare the method used in this description with that 
 of the preceding. What is the difference in the effect ? 
 Note that in the second the perception is arrested a very 
 little beyond its first stage, while in The Old Lady the first 
 impressions of the room are passed over and the descrip- 
 tion comes at once to details. Recast the description of 
 the Old Lady's bedroom so that it may embody the early 
 as well as the later stages of perception. 
 
 6. " A great author, Gentlemen, is not one who merely 
 has a copia verborum, whether in prose or verse, and can, 
 as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid 
 phrases and swelling sentences; but he is one who has 
 something to say and knows how to say it. I do not 
 claim for him, as such, any great depth of thought, or 
 breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge 
 of human nature, or experience of human life, though 
 these additional gifts he may have, and the more he has 
 of them the greater he is; but I ascribe to him, as his 
 
 * Leigh Hunt: Essays ; The Old Lady. 
 ■f C. F. Wool'son: Anne, Chap. Ill, p. 58. 
 
192 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 characteristic gift, in a large sense the faculty of Expres- 
 sion. He is master of the twofold Logos, the thought 
 and the word, distinct, but inseparable from each other. 
 He may, if so be, elaborate his compositions, or he may 
 pour out his improvisations, but in either case he has but 
 one aim, which he keeps steadily before him, and is con- 
 scientious and single-minded in fulfilling. That aim is 
 to give forth what he has within him; and from his very 
 earnestness it comes to pass that, whatever be the splendor 
 of his diction or the harmony of his periods, he has with 
 him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. What- 
 ever be his subject, high or low, he treats it suitably and 
 for its own sake. If he is a poet, ' nil molitur inepte. ' If 
 he is an orator, then too he speaks, not only ' distincte ' 
 and ■ splendid^ ' but also ' apte. ' His page is the lucid 
 mirror of his mind and life — 
 
 " 'Quo fit, ut omnis 
 Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella 
 Vita senis.' 
 
 " He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forci- 
 bly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to 
 be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyze 
 his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as a 
 whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; he 
 has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous. When 
 his imagination wells up, it overflows in ornament; when 
 his heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He always 
 has the right word for the right idea, and never a word 
 too much. If he is brief, it is because few words suffice; 
 when he is lavish of them, still each word has its mark, 
 and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march of his 
 elocution. He expresses what all feel, but all cannot say; 
 and his sayings pass into proverbs among his people, and 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. I93 
 
 his phrases become household words and idioms of, their 
 daily speech, which is 'tessellated with the rich fragments 
 of his language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of 
 Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of 
 modern palaces. 
 
 " Such pre-eminently is Shakespeare among ourselves; 
 such pre-eminently Virgil among the Latins; such in their 
 degree are all those writers who in every nation go by the 
 name of Classics. To particular nations. they are neces- 
 sarily attached from the circumstance of the variety of 
 tongues, and the peculiarities of each; but so far they 
 have a catholic and ecumenical character, that what they 
 express is common to the whole race of man, and they 
 alone are able to express it. " * 
 
 What are the means employed to characterize the 
 ' ' great author ? " In what does his greatness consist f 
 In characterizing ' ' the great man ' ' what would be the 
 difference in the means you would use ? 
 
 7. " Men of Berkeley's type are born to see God face 
 to face; and when they -see him, they do so without fear, 
 without mystical trembling, without being driven to dark 
 and lofty speech. They take the whole thing as a matter 
 of course. They tell you of it frankly, gently, simply, 
 and with a beautiful childlike surprise that your eyes are 
 not always as open as their own. Meanwhile, they are 
 true philosophers, keen in dialectic, skillful in the thrust 
 and parry of debate, a little loquacious, but never weari- 
 some. Of the physical world they know comparatively 
 little, but what they know they love very much. A very 
 few lines of philosophical research they pursue eagerly, 
 minutely, fruitfully; concerning others they can make 
 
 * Newman: Lectures on University Subjects. 
 
194 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 nothing but the most superficial remarks. They produce 
 books young, and with marvelous -facility. They have a 
 full-fledged system ready by the time they are twenty-five. 
 They will write an immortal work, as it were, over night. 
 They are, for the rest, through and through poetical. 
 Each one of their essays will be as crisp and delicate as a 
 good sonnet. Yet what they lack is elaboration, wiliness, 
 and architectural massiveness of research. They take 
 after Plato, their father, as to grace and ingenuity. His 
 life-long patience and mature productiveness they never 
 reach. The world finds them paradoxical; refutes them 
 again and again with a certain Philistine ferocity; makes 
 naught of them in hundreds of learned volumes; but 
 returns ever afresh to the hopeless task of keeping them 
 permanently naught. In the heaven of reflection, amongst 
 the philosophical angels who contemplate the beatific 
 vision of the divine essence, such spirits occupy neither 
 the place of the archangels, nor of those who speed o'er 
 land and sea, nor yet of those who only stand and wait. 
 Their office is a less serious one. They cast glances now 
 and then at this inspiring aspect or at that of the divine 
 essence, sing quite their own song in its praise, find little 
 in most of the other angels that can entertain them, and 
 spend their time for the most part in gentle private mus- 
 ings, many of which (for so Berkeley's own portrait sug- 
 gests to me) they apparently find far too pretty to be 
 uttered at all. We admire them, we may even love them; 
 yet no one would call them precisely heroes of contem- 
 plation. They themselves shed no tears, but they also 
 begin no revolutions, are apostles of no world-wide move- 
 ments. " * 
 
 * J. Royce: TAe Spirit of Modern Philosophy, pp. 86-7. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 19S 
 
 Embody the impression gained from this in a descrip- 
 tion of Berkeley's face as you imagine it. If possible, 
 compare your results with an actual picture. If this is 
 not possible, all the students may compare results in 
 class, and discuss their differences, with the passage just 
 cited as a basis of reference. 
 
 8. The following description will be found excellent in 
 material, but unevenly good in presentation. Test it by 
 reading aloud to some one else, and by noting its effect 
 on yourself, on a first reading and on a second. Discover 
 and strengthen the weak parts. Trace the line of thought, 
 and compare with the summary in the last paragraph.* 
 Examine each paragraph to test the way in which its 
 theme is developed. 
 
 "The young lady of 1837 has been to a fashionable 
 school; she has learned accomplishments, deportment, 
 and dress. She is full of sentiment; there was an amazing 
 amount of sentiment in the air about that time; she loves 
 to talk and read about gallant knights, crusaders, and 
 troubadours; she gently touches the guitar; her senti- 
 ment, or her little affectation, has touched her with a 
 graceful melancholy, a becoming stoop, a sweet pensive- 
 ness. She loves the aristocracy, even although her home 
 is in that part of London called Bloomsbury, whither the 
 belted Earl cometh not, even though her papa goes into 
 the city; she reads a good deal of poetry, especially those 
 poems which deal with the affections, of which there are 
 many at this time. On Sunday she goes to church 
 religiously, and pensively, followed by a footman carrying 
 her prayer-book and a long stick; she can play on the 
 guitar and the piano a few easy pieces which she has 
 
 * This can be made very interesting in a class discussion, 
 after the students have done some independent study on it. 
 
196 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 learned. She knows a few words of French, which she 
 produces at frequent intervals; as to history, geography, 
 science, the condition of the people, her mind is an entire 
 blank; she knows nothing of these things. Her conver- 
 sation is commonplace, as her ideas are limited; she 
 cannot reason on any subject whatever because of her 
 ignorance, or, as she herself would say, because she is a 
 woman. In her presence, and indeed in the presence of 
 ladies generally, men talk trivialities. There was indeed 
 a general belief that women were creatures incapable of 
 argument, or of reason, or of connected thought. It was 
 no use arguing about the matter. The Lord had made 
 them so. Women, said the philosophers, cannot under- 
 stand logic; they see things, if they do see them at all, 
 by instinctive perception. This theory accounted for 
 everything, for those cases when women undoubtedly did 
 ' see things. ' Also it fully justified people in withholding 
 from women any kind of education worthy the name. A 
 quite needless expense, you understand. 
 
 " The girl who lived in Bloomsbury Square, or in the 
 suburbs, — say Clapham Common, — had in those days to 
 make herself happy with slender and simple materials. 
 There were few concerts ; I think the ' Philharmonic ' was 
 already in existence; oratorios were sometimes performed, 
 but it was not every girl who liked what was then called 
 classical music; the general cultivation of music was poor 
 and meager and within very narrow limits; people liked 
 songs, it is true, especially pathetic songs. These, like 
 the poetry of the ' Keepsake ' and ' Friendship's Offering,' 
 mostly turned on the domestic affections. The young 
 ladies recognized this sentiment, bought or copied those 
 songs, and sang the most mournful of ditties. Everybody, 
 in every class which respected itself and claimed gentility 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 197 
 
 of any kind, talked about the Opera, to which the well- 
 to-do young lady was taken once a year solemnly. This 
 gave her the right for the rest of the year to talk about 
 the repertoire and to speak with disrespect of the leading 
 singers. 
 
 "The theatep was very seldom visited; indeed, there 
 were reasons why it was not desirable that young ladies 
 should go to the theater ; if they did go it was an event 
 very much discussed both before and after. There were 
 only one or two theaters that respectable people could pos- 
 sibly attend, and the one part of the house where ladies 
 could be seen was the dress circle. Now, in the ' Thirties, ' 
 if my information is correct, there were good actors, but 
 the plays were monstrously bad. The Queen, however, 
 used to like going to the theater. If you walk down to 
 those north of the Strand, you may see how the road was 
 widened for her to go to the Adelphi melodramas. 
 
 " The reading of girls was carefully selected for them ; 
 in serious circles — there were many circles in 1840 privi- 
 leged to be serious — fiction was absolutely forbidden ; its 
 place was taken by religious biography ; it is wonderful to 
 think how large a part was played by religious biography 
 about that time. I do not know what books besides these 
 biographies and records of ' conversation ' were allowed, 
 but I imagine that there were not many. At all events a 
 young woman was not allowed to read anything which 
 would suggest to her the wickedness of the world, the 
 realities of the world, the truth about men and women, or 
 the meanings of humanity. She was to leave her mother's 
 nest not only innocent — girls do still leave their mothers 
 in innocence, — but also in a state of ignorance, which was 
 then mistaken for a state of grace. How far she really 
 was ignorant no one but herself could tell ; one imagines 
 
1 98 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 that there may have been some knowledge behind that de- 
 mure countenance that was not generally suspected. 
 
 " As for her accomplishments, they comprised, apart 
 from the knowledge of a few pieces on the guitar and the 
 piano, some slight power of sketching or flower-painting 
 in water colors. Of course, it was nothing better than 
 the amusement of an amateur. As for attempting litera- 
 ture, no one, with very, very few exceptions, ever thought 
 of it. There was then but a limited demand for women's 
 literary work, a very limited demand ; yet there had al- 
 ready been some very fine work done by women. Mrs. 
 Ellis was writing those famous and immortal works of 
 hers on the ' Women of England , ' the ' Mothers of 
 England,' the 'Wives of England,' the 'Daughters of 
 England,' and, so far as I know, for the subject is inex- 
 haustible, the ' Housemaids of England. ' These essays, 
 which I fear, dear reader, you have never seen, endeav- 
 ored to mould women on the theory of recognized intel- 
 lectual inferiority to man. She was considered beneath 
 him in intellect as in physical strength ; she was exhorted 
 to defer to man; to acknowledge his superiority; not to 
 show herself anxious to combat his opinions. At this 
 very time, one woman at least — Harriet Martineau — was 
 proving to the world that there were exceptions to the in- 
 feriority of the sex in matters of reason, while another 
 woman, Marian Evans ('George Eliot'), already grown 
 up, was shortly to enter the field with another illustration 
 of the same remarkable fact. 
 
 " It has been often charged against Thackeray that his 
 good women were insipid. Thackeray, like most artists, 
 could only draw the women of his own time ; and at that 
 time they were undoubtedly insipid. Men, I suppose, 
 liked them so ; liked them to be childishly ignorant, to 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 199 
 
 carry shrinking modesty so far as to find the point of a 
 shoe projecting beyond the folds of a frock indelicate, to 
 confess that serious subjects were beyond a woman's grasp, 
 never even to pretend to form an independent judgment ; 
 to know nothing of art, history, science, literature, poli- 
 tics, sociology, manners. Men liked these things ; women 
 yielded to please the men ; their vecy ignorance formed a 
 subject of laudable pride with the Englishwoman of the 
 ' Forties. ' 
 
 " As for doing serious work, the girl of that period 
 shrank appalled at the very thought. To earn one's live- 
 lihood was the deepest degradation ; the most sincere pity 
 was felt for those unhappy girls whose fathers died or 
 failed, or left them unprovided for, so that they must 
 needs do something. It was pity mingled with contempt. 
 Even this meek and gentle maiden of the early Victorian 
 period could feel, and could show, the emotion of con- 
 tempt. Readers of Cranford will remember how the 
 unfortunate lady opened a tea-shop ; those ladies who 
 were too old or too ignorant for teaching—' going out ' 
 as a governess — sometimes set up a ' fancy ' shop, where 
 children's things, lace, embroideries, things in wool, and 
 pretty trifles, were sold. I remember such a shiop kept by 
 two gentlewomen, old, reduced, decayed ; but they were 
 very sad, always in the lowest depression ; I fear it was 
 but a poor business. There were no professions open to 
 women. Those who did not marry — they were compara- 
 tively few — stayed at home with one of the brothers, gen- 
 erally the eldest, and, as often as not, such an unmarried 
 sister proved the angel of the house. Sometimes, to be 
 sure, the lot was hard, and she was made to feel her de- 
 pendence. In general, I like to believe, the single woman 
 of the family, in whom all confided, in whom all trusted, 
 
200 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 the nurse of the sick, the contriver and designer of the 
 girls' frocks, the maker of fine cakes and the owner of 
 choice receipts, who knew all the branches of a numerous 
 family, who kept together the brothers and cousins who 
 would fly apart but for her, was as much valued as she de- 
 served to be. 
 
 " There were many ways of ' going out ' as a govern- 
 ess. The most miserable lot of all was considered — and 
 no doubt was — to be a resident teacher in a girls' school. 
 In this position there was no society of any kind ; there 
 was no chance of meeting young men ; there was no pleas- 
 ure ; there was an enforced and unnatural pretense at 
 virtue ; there was no hope of change, no hope of happi- 
 ness, no hope of love. There was not even any chance 
 of making money. One might also become a visiting 
 governess and undertake the children of a house for the 
 day : this gave liberty for the evening. One might be- 
 come a resident governess in a house : this exposed a girl 
 to the insolence of the servants, the advances of the sons, 
 the caprices or snubs of her employer ; novels of thirty 
 years ago are full of the downtrodden governess. One 
 pities her because the position, even at the best, must have 
 been vile. Indeed, I remember very well, the position 
 was intolerable, because of snubs and slights. At the 
 same time her employer complained that she was meek to 
 exasperation, and resigned to a point which maddened. 
 I have known ladies who were quite carried away, they 
 became speechless, in trying to tell of the meekness of a 
 governess. Again, a girl might teach music if she knew 
 any — a thankless task when the stupidities of the pupils 
 were visited on the teacher. A woman was not allowed 
 to teach dancing, for a most praiseworthy reason — )'ou 
 cannot teach dancing without showing more than the tips 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION, zoi 
 
 of the toes — half the foot perhaps ; where then is feminine 
 modesty ? This accomplishment was therefore taught by 
 a ' professor, ' generally a man who had played in his 
 youth some small part in the operatic ballet ; he carried a 
 little ' kit ' or small fiddle, with which he discoursed a 
 scraping, watery kind of music, while his nimble feet 
 showed the way, and his thin legs cut single or double 
 capers, which the girls admired but naturally were not in- 
 vited to imitate. Nor could a woman teach writing and 
 arithmetic — ^I cannot possibly explain why ; for some un- 
 known reason these useful arts were always taught by men. 
 Yet women could add up, women could write, even in the 
 year 1840. One male teacher of arithmetic and penman- 
 ship I knew. He practiced entirely in girls' schools. He 
 was proud of his profession, which he mixed with those of 
 divinity and law. He was full of innocuous jokes, and, so 
 to speak, non-alcoholic stories. He died about twenty 
 years ago, ruined, he told me, by the introduction of 
 women into the profession. 
 
 ' ' I say, then, that in the year 1 840, as far as I can 
 remember, there was hardly a single occupation in which 
 a gentlewoman could engage, except that of teaching. 
 Miniature painting can hardly be called an exception, 
 because it is given to so few to be painters. She could 
 not lecture or speak in public. St. Paul's admonition to 
 women, that they must not ' chatter ' in church, inter- 
 preted to forbid public speaking in church, was extended 
 to every kind of public speaking. No woman so much 
 as dreamed of speaking in public at this time. Later on, 
 a Mrs. Clara Balfour astonished people by lecturing in 
 literary institutes. I believe she was the first. I remem- 
 ber hearing her lecture. The people sat with gloomy 
 faces, and when they came away they shook their heads : 
 
202 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 ' Irregular, my dear Madam. ' ' Sir, it is irreligious. ' 
 ' Madam, it was an unfeminine and revolting exhibition.' 
 These comments were heard on the stairs. This system 
 of artificial restraints certainly produced faithful wives, 
 gentle mothers, loving sisters, able housewives. God 
 forbid that we should say otherwise, but it is certain that 
 the intellectual attainments of women were then what we 
 should call contemptible, and the range of subjects of 
 which they knew anything was absurdly narrow and 
 limited. I detect the woman of 1840 in the char- 
 acter of Mrs. Clive Newcome, and indeed, in Mrs. 
 George Osborne, and in other familiar characters of 
 Thackeray, 
 
 " I must not forget, in considering the Englishwoman 
 of 1840, her extraordinary cowardice; it was impressed 
 upon her from childhood that she was a poor, weak 
 creature; that she needed protection, even in broad day- 
 light. Therefore, when a young lady of fortune went 
 abroad, unless she drove in her-carriage, she had a hulk- 
 ing footman walking behind her. If she was not a lady 
 of fortune, she was escorted by a maid; she could go 
 nowhere by herself; she saw danger at every corner, and 
 was ready to scream at meeting a strange man in the open 
 street. Nor must we forget her little affectations. She 
 could not help them; they were part of her education. 
 For instance, it was a very common affectation with girls 
 that they could not eat anything at all, such was their 
 extraordinary delicacy and elevation above the common 
 mortal. So they sat at dinner with a morsel upon their 
 plates which they left untouched; some girls made up for 
 this privation by a valiant lunch; some habitually lived 
 low and practiced, though in no religious spirit, abste- 
 mious austerities. I think, however, that the girl who 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 203 
 
 wished to be thought consumptive, cultivated a hectic 
 bloom, and coughed and fainted, carried affectation per- 
 haps too far. 
 
 " Such was the woman of 1840; in London, among the 
 richer sort, a gentle doll, often good and affectionate; un- 
 selfish and devoted; religious, charitable, tender-hearted; 
 sometimes, through the shutting up of all the channels for 
 intellectual activity, snappish, impatient, and shrewish; 
 in the country, in addition to these qualities, a housewife 
 of the very first order. ' ' * 
 
 9. Write a generalized description on one out of each 
 of the following groups of subjects. 
 
 (i) The college man's or girl's room. 
 
 (2) The parlor of the country hotel, or of the city 
 
 boarding-house. 
 
 (3) The country store. 
 
 (4) The suburban picnic ground. 
 
 (5) The city (or village) street at church time. 
 Note the difference in method from that of the writing 
 done in Lesson VL 
 
 10. (i) Trout streams. Written to tell some one else 
 
 what sort of streams are worth trying. 
 
 (2) Old-fashioned gardens. 
 
 (3) City parks. 
 
 (4) City back yards. Written for a country child. 
 
 (5) The places where cowslips grow (or columbine, 
 
 or cardinal flower, or fringed gentian, etc.). 
 Written to a city child who doesn't know 
 where to look. 
 
 (6) The white birch (or the sycamore, or the apple 
 
 tree). 
 
 * Walter Besant. 
 
204 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY (VRITING. 
 
 11. (i) City newsboys. 
 
 (2) Shop-girls. Written to rouse some sympathy 
 
 with their hard life. 
 
 (3) Hand-organ grinders. Written to a country 
 
 boy, or to a city-bred man who has gone 
 to the country for rest. What would be 
 the difference in the two cases, in what you 
 would say and how you would say it ? 
 
 (4) The trained nurse. An effort to persuade an 
 
 old lady to employ one, or to dissuade her 
 from doing so. 
 
 (5) The old negro mammy. 
 
 (6) The ideal waiter. 
 
 (7) The country belle. 
 
 (8) The hired girl. 
 
 (9) The tramp. 
 
 (10) The old-fashioned grandfather. 
 
 (11) The traveling agent. 
 
 (12) The country fisherman. 
 
 (13) The village loafer. 
 
 (14) The family doctor. 
 
 (15) The " wall-flower. " 
 
 (16) The professional shopper. 
 
 Note that these subjects demand more emphasis on character 
 than the earlier ones. Yet more is required in the following. 
 
 12. (i) The younger brother (or sister). 
 
 (2) The unselfish member of the family. 
 
 (3) The village humorist. 
 
 (4) The neighborhood gos.sip. 
 
 (5) The person without a sense of humor. 
 
 (6) The unsuccessful man. 
 
 (7) The over-conscientious person. 
 
 (8) The philanthropist. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS REL/ITION TO EXPOSITION. 205 
 
 (9) The society leader. 
 (10) The character that makes an ideal club-member, 
 as contrasted with the club-leader; or the 
 workman and the overseer, the soldier and 
 the officer, the maid and the mistress. 
 
 LESSON XVII. 
 
 1. Write an account of the way in which some particular 
 holiday was spent, e.g., Christmas, Easter, the Fourth 
 of July, Decoration Day, etc. 
 
 2. Write a generalized narrative describing the typical 
 order of affairs on such a day. 
 
 Examine the difference between the method used here 
 and that in i. 
 
 3. Expound some of the following subjects by general- 
 ized narration. 
 
 (i) Getting ready for a party. 
 
 (2) Cleaning a wheel, the morning after you have ^ 
 
 been surprised by a thunder shower. 
 
 (3) Setting the table at a picnic. 
 
 (4) Packing a trunk in a hurry, or for the summer 
 
 vacation. 
 
 (5) Hunting for some lost article. 
 
 (6) Going chestnutting. 
 
 (7) Learning to skate, or play golf, or wheel. 
 
 (8) The order of business in a woman's club. 
 
 (9) Going shopping with a bargain-hunter.* 
 
 (10) How M learns her Latin lesson. 
 
 (11) Losing one's temper. 
 
 (12) Making up a quarrel. 
 
 * Notice that the use of generalized narration will reach 
 about the same results as generalized description, in Lesson 
 XVI, II, (16), and cf. pp. 168-9. 
 
2o6 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 4. " That stormy winter after the Ladybrig murder our 
 fancies and the wind together played Eleanor and me sad 
 tricks. When once we began to listen we seemed to hear 
 a whole tragedy going on close outside. We could dis- 
 tinguish footsteps and voices through the bluster, and 
 then a struggle in the shrubbery, and a ihud, and a groan, 
 and then a roar of wind, half-drowning the sound of flying 
 footsteps — and then an awful pause, and at last faint 
 groaning and a bump, as of some poor wounded body 
 falling against the house. At this point we were wont to 
 summon courage and rush out, with the kitchen poker 
 and a candle shapeless with tallow shrouds from the 
 strong draughts. We never could see anything; partly 
 perhaps because the candle was always blown out; and 
 when we stood outside it became evident that what we 
 had heard was only the wind, and a bough of the old 
 acacia-tree which beat at intervals upon the house." * 
 
 Recount experiences which were thus habitual with 
 you in childhood or have since become so. Distinguish 
 between this account and that of a single one of these 
 experiences. 
 
 5. "A sword-dance is still (I believe) kept up in 
 Northumberland, in the course of which there is a transi- 
 tion from lyric to dramatic. At the opening it is all skill 
 and martial spirit; the ballad rings of combat and the 
 gestures are feats of sword-play. But gradually the dance 
 works into a plot ; as it increases in passion the Rector 
 rushes in to part the combatants, receives a thrust and 
 falls. Then all say ' Not I ' and ' O for a doctor! ' A 
 doctor enters, painting himself in accordance with pop- 
 ular conceptions : his is a ten-pound fee, but for a favor 
 
 * Mrs. J. H. Ewing: Six to Sixteen. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 207 
 
 he will make it nine pound, nineteen and elevenpence; 
 he has a pill that will cure 
 
 " ' The plague, the palsy, and the gout, 
 The devil within, the devil without. 
 Everything but a love sick maid 
 And the consumption in the pocket.' 
 
 Examining the patient he comes to a favorable conclu- 
 sion, whereupon all cry 
 
 " 'Parson, rise up and fight again, 
 The doctor says you are not slain.' 
 
 The Rector comes to, and all ends with rejoicings. The 
 performance which began as pure dancing concludes as 
 pure acting." * 
 
 What is the idea which is here expounded ? Explain 
 the relation between the first sentence and the rest of the 
 passage. 
 
 6. "In the season of hot weather in the central part of 
 the Mississippi Valley, there often come successions of 
 days when the atmosphere is not stirred by the winds, but 
 remains as still as the air of a cave. Despite the steady 
 gain in the heat, the sky stays cloudless, or at most is 
 flecked by those light clouds that lie five miles or more 
 above the surface of the earth. All nature seems cowed 
 beneath the fervent heat, yet there is nothing of distinct 
 portent in earth or air. At last, toward evening there 
 may be seen a sudden curdling of the western sky; in a 
 few minutes the clouds gather, coming from nowhere, 
 growing at once in the lurid air. In less than half an 
 hour the forces of the storm are organized, and its dread- 
 ful advance begins. If we were just beneath the gather- 
 
 * Richard G. Moulton: The Ancient Classical Drama, pp. 
 257-8. 
 
2o8 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 ing clouds we would find that the air over a space a mile 
 or so in diameter was spinning around in a great whirl- 
 pool, and while the revolving mass slowly advanced, the 
 central part moved rapidly upwards. Beginning slowly, 
 all the movements of the storm, the whirling action, the 
 vertical streaming of the air, its onward movement, all 
 gain speed of motion with astonishing rapidity. In a 
 minute or two some cubic miles of air are in a state 
 of intense gyratory movement, mounting upwards as 
 violently as the gases over a volcano. To replace this 
 strong whirling uprush, there is an indraught from every 
 side towards the center of the whirlwind; and as this 
 center moves quickly forward, the rush of air is strongest 
 from behind towards the advancing hurricane. The rate 
 at which the storm goes forward is very variable, though 
 it is generally as much as forty to one hundred miles an 
 hour; but this is not the measure of its destructive power. 
 The rending effect of the storm is much greater than 
 would be given by a simple blast of air moving at this 
 speed. Much of this peculiar capacity for destruction 
 may perhaps be due to the gyratory motion of the ^\■ind 
 in the storm-center, which on one side of the whirlwind 
 adds the speed arising from its circular movement to the 
 translatory velocity of the whirlwind itself. Some of the 
 records tell us that houses with closed windows have been 
 known to burst apart, as if from an explosion of gun- 
 powder, while others, that had their doors and windows 
 wide open, remained essentially unharmed. It has been 
 conjectured that this action may be due to a sudden 
 rarefaction of the air on the outside of the building; but 
 this cause cannot be sufficient to produce such effects, 
 and if such explosions occur the cause must be looked for 
 elsewhere. After the storm is once developed, it seems 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 209 
 
 very quickly to acquire its maximum of destructive power 
 and its speed of translation. At the outset and during 
 the period of most efficient action, the strip of country 
 affected is generally very narrow, not often exceeding a 
 mile in width; as the storm advances the path seems 
 gradually to grow wider, and the gyratory movement as 
 well as the translatory motion of the meteor less consider- 
 able, until at last it fades into an ordinary thunder-storm 
 or dies into a calm. 
 
 What purpose, not to be accomplished by a conven- 
 tional definition, is here accomplished by the narrative 
 form ? 
 
 7. Read the following essay on Walking Tours. What 
 impression does it leave with you ? What impression did 
 the author mean to give you ? 
 
 Walking Tours. 
 
 ' ' It must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some 
 would have us fancy, is merely a better or worse way of 
 seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing 
 landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in spite 
 of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But 
 landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. He who 
 is indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of 
 the picturesque, but of certain jolly humors — of the hope 
 and spirit with which the march begins at morning, and 
 the peace and spiritual repletion of the evening's rest. 
 He cannot tell whether he puts his knapsack on, or takes 
 it off, with more delight. The excitement of the de- 
 parture puts him in key for that of the arrival. Whatever 
 he does is not only a reward in itself, but will be further 
 rewarded in the sequel; and so pleasure leads on to 
 
2IO A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 pleasure in an endless chain. It is this that so few can 
 understand; they will either be always lounging or always 
 at five miles an hour; they do not play off the one 
 against the other, prepare all day for the evening, and all 
 evening for the next day. And, above all, it is here that 
 your overwalker fails of comprehension. His heart rises 
 against those who drink their curacjoa in a liqueur glass, 
 when he himself can swill it in a brown John. He will 
 not believe that the flavor is more delicate in the smaller 
 dose. He will not believe that to walk this unconscion- 
 able distance is merely to stupefy and brutalize himself, 
 and come to his inn, at night, with a sort of frost on his 
 five wits, and a starless night of darkness in his spirit. 
 Not for him the mild luminous evening of the temperate 
 walker! He has nothing left of man but a physical need 
 of bedtime and a double nightcap; and even his pipe, if 
 he be a smoker, will be savorless and disenchanted. It 
 is the fate of such an one to take twice as much trouble as 
 is needed to obtain happiness, and miss the happiness in 
 the end ; he is the man of the proverb, in short, who goes 
 further and fares worse. 
 
 " Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should 
 be gone upon alone. If you go in a company, or even 
 in pairs, it is no longer a walking tour in anything but 
 name; it is something else and more in the nature of a 
 picnic. A walking tour should be gone upon alone, 
 because freedom is of the essence; because you should be 
 able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that, as 
 the freak takes you ; and because you must have your own 
 pace, and neither trot alongside a champion walker, nor 
 mince in time with a girl. And then you must be open 
 to all impressions and let your thought take color from 
 what you see. You should be as a pipe for any wind to 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 211 
 
 play upon. ' I cannot see the wit, ' says Hazlitt, ' of 
 walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the 
 country I wish to vegetate like the country, ' — -which is 
 the gist of all that can be said upon the matter. There 
 should be no cackle of voices at your elbow, to jar on the 
 meditative silence of the morning. And so long as a 
 man is reasoning he cannot surrender himself to that fine 
 intoxication that comes of much motion in the open air, 
 that begins in a sort of dazzle and sluggishness of the 
 brain, and ends in a peace that passes comprehension. 
 
 " During the first day or so of any tour there are 
 moments of bitterness, when the traveler feels more than 
 coldly towards his knapsack, when he is half in a mind to 
 throw it bodily over the hedge and, like Christian on a 
 similar occasion, ' give three leaps and go on singing. ' 
 And yet it soon acquires a property of easiness. It 
 becomes magnetic; the spirit of the journey enters into 
 it. And no sooner have you passed the straps over your 
 shoulder than the lees of sleep are cleared from you, you 
 pull yourself together with a shake, and fall at once into 
 your stride. And surely, of all possible moods, this, in 
 which a man takes the road, is the best. Of course, if 
 he will keep thinking of his anxieties, if he wi'U open the 
 merchant Abudah's chest and walk arm-in-arm with the 
 hag — why, whatever he is, and whether he walk fast or 
 slow, the chances are that he will not be happy. And so 
 much the more shame to himself ! There are perhaps 
 thirty men setting forth at that same hour, and I would 
 lay a large wager there is not another dull face among the 
 thirty. It would be a fine thing to follow, in a coat of 
 darkness, one after another of these wayfarers, some 
 summer morning, for the first few miles upon the road. 
 This one, who walks fast, with a keen look in his eyes, is 
 
212 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 all concentrated in his own mind; he is up at his loom, 
 weaving and weaving, to set fhe landscape to words. 
 This one peers about, as he goes, among the grasses ; he 
 waits by the canal to watch the dragon-flies; he leans on 
 the gate of the pasture, and cannot look enough upon the 
 complacent kine. And here comes another, talking, 
 laughing, and gesticulating to himself. His face changes 
 from time to time, as indignation flashes from his eyes or 
 anger clouds his forehead. He is composing articles, 
 delivering orations, and conducting the most impassioned 
 interviews, by the way. A little farther on, and it is as 
 like as not he will begin to sing. And well for him, 
 supposing him to be no great master in that art, if he 
 stumble across no stolid peasant at a corner; for on such 
 an occasion, I scarcely know which is the more troubled, 
 or whether it is worse to suffer the confusion of your 
 troubadour, or the unfeigned alarm of your clown. A 
 sedentary population, accustomed, besides, to the strange 
 mechanical bearing of the common tramp, can in no wise 
 explain to itself the gaiety of these passers-by. I knew 
 one man who was arrested as a runaway lunatic, because, 
 although a full-grown person with a red beard, he skipped 
 as he went like a child. And you would be astonished 
 if I were to tell you all the grave and learned heads who 
 have confessed to me that, when on walking tours, they 
 sang — and sang very ill — and had a pair of red ears when, 
 as described above, the inauspicious peasant plumped into 
 their arms from round a corner. And here, lest you 
 should think I am exaggerating, is Hazlitt's own con- 
 fession, ^from his essay On Going a Journey, which is so 
 good that there should be a tax levied on all who have 
 not read it : — 
 
 " ' Give me the clear blue sky over my head,' says he. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS REL/ITION TO EXPOSITION. 213 
 
 ' and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road 
 before me, and a three hours' march to dinner — and then 
 to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on 
 these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. ' 
 
 ' ' Bravo ! After that adventure of my friend with the 
 policeman, you would not have cared, would you, to 
 publish that in the first' person ? But we have no bravery 
 nowadays, and, even in books, must all pretend to be as 
 dull and foolish as our neighbors. It was so with Haz- 
 litt. And notice how learned he is (as, indeed, through- 
 out the essay) in the theory of walking tours. He is none 
 of your athletic men in purple stockings, who walk their 
 fifty miles a day: three hours' march is his ideal. And 
 then he must have a winding road, the epicure! 
 
 " Yet there is one thing I object to in these words of 
 his, one thing in the great master's practice that seems to 
 me not wholly wise. I do not approve of that leaping 
 and running. Both of these hurry the respiration; they 
 both shake up the brain out of its glorious open-air con- 
 fusion; and they both break the pace. Uneven walking 
 is not so agreeable to the body, and it distracts and irri- 
 tates the mind. Whereas, when once you have fallen 
 into an equable stride, it requires no conscious thought 
 from you to keep it up, and yet it prevents you from 
 thinking earnestly of anything else. Like knitting, like 
 the work of a copying-clerk, it gradually neutralizes and 
 sets to sleep the serious activity of the mind. We can 
 think of this or that, lightly and laughingly, as a child 
 thinks, or as we think in a morning doze; we can make 
 puns or puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand 
 ways with words and rhymes; but when it comes to 
 honest work, when we come to gather ourselves together 
 for an effort, we may sound the trumpet as loud and long 
 
214 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 as we please; the great barons of the mind will not rally 
 to the standard, but sit, each one, at home, warming his 
 hands over his own fire and brooding on his own private 
 thought ! 
 
 " In the course of a day's walk, you see, there is much 
 variance in the mood. From the exhilaration of the 
 start, to the happy phlegm of tha arrival, the change is 
 certainly great. As the day goes on, the traveler moves 
 from the one extreme towards the other. He becomes 
 more and more incorporated with the material landscape, 
 and the open-air drunkenness grows upon him with great 
 strides, until he posts along the road, and sees everything 
 about him, as in a cheerful dream. The first is certainly 
 brighter, but the second stage is the more peaceful. A 
 man does not make so many articles towards the end, 
 nor does he laugh aloud; but the purely animal pleasures, 
 the sense of physical well being, the delight of every 
 inhalation, of every time the muscles tighten down the 
 thigh, console him for the absence of the others, and 
 bring him to his destination still content. 
 
 " Nor must I forget to say a word on bivouacs. You 
 come to a milestone on a hill, or some place where deep 
 ways meet under trees; and off goes the knapsack, and 
 down you sit to smoke a pipe in the shade. You sink 
 into yourself, and the birds come round and look at you ; 
 and your smoke dissipates upon the afternoon under the 
 blue dome of heaven; and the sun lies warm upon your 
 feet, and the cool air visits your neck and turns aside your 
 open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have an evil 
 conscience. You may dally as long as you like by the 
 roadside. It is almost as if the millennium were arrived, 
 when we shall throw our clocks and watches over the 
 housetop, and remember time and seasons no more. Not 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 215 
 
 to keep hours for a lifetime is, I was going to say, to live 
 forever. You have no idea, unless you have tried it, how 
 endlessly long is a summer's day, that you measure out 
 only by hunger, and bring to an end only when yon are 
 drowsy. I know a village where there are hardly any 
 clocks, where no one knows more of the days of the week 
 than by a sort of instinct for the fete on Sundays, and 
 where only one person can tell you the day of the month 
 and she is generally wrong; and if people were aware how 
 slow Time journeyed in that village, and what armfuls of 
 spare hours he gives, over and above the bargain, to its 
 wise inhabitants, I believe there would be a stampede out 
 of London, Liverpool, Paris, and a variety of large towns, 
 where the clocks lose their heads, and shake the hours 
 out each one faster than the other, as though they were 
 all in a wager. And all these foolish pilgrims would each 
 bring his own misery along with him, in a watch-pocket! 
 It is to be noticed, there were no clocks and watches in 
 the much-vaunted days before the flood. It follows, of 
 course, there were no appointments, and punctuality was 
 not yet thought upon. ' Though ye take from a covetous 
 man all his treasure,' says Milton, ' he has yet one jewel 
 left ; ye cannot deprive him of his covetousness. ' And so 
 I would say of a modern man of business, you may do 
 what you will for him, put him in Eden, give him the 
 elixir of life — he has still a flaw at heart, he still has his 
 business habits. Now, there is no time when business 
 habits are more mitigated than on a walking tour. And 
 so during these halts, as I say, you will feel almost free. 
 
 " But it is at night, and after dinner, that the best 
 hour comes. There are no such pipes to be smoked as 
 those that follow a good day's march; the flavor of the 
 tobacco is a thing to be remembered, it is so dry and 
 
21 6 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY (VRITING. 
 
 aromatic, so full and so fine. If you wind up the evening 
 with grog, you will own there was never such grog; at 
 every sip a jocund tranquillity spreads about your limbs, 
 and sits easily in your heart. If you read a book — and 
 you will never do so save by fits and starts— you find the 
 language strangely racy and harmonious; words take a 
 new meaning; single sentences possess the ear for half an 
 hour together; and the writer endears himself to you, at 
 every page, by the nicest coincidence of sentiment. It 
 seems as if it were a book you had written yourself in a 
 dream. To all we have read on such occasions we look 
 back with special favor. ' It was on the loth of April, 
 1798,' says Hazlitt, with amorous precision, 'that I sat 
 down to a volume of the new Helo'ise, at the Inn at 
 Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. ' 
 I should wish to quote more, for though we are mighty 
 fine fellows nowadays, we cannot write like Hazlitt. 
 And, talking of that, a volume of Hazlitt's essays would 
 be a capital pocket-book on such a journey; so would a 
 volume of Heine's songs; and for Tristram Shandy I can 
 pledge a fair experience. 
 
 " If the evening be fine and warm, there is nothing 
 better in life than to lounge before the inn door in the 
 sunset, or lean over the parapet of the bridge, to watch 
 the weeds and the thick fishes. It is then, if ever, that 
 you taste Joviality to the full significance of that audacious 
 word. Your muscles are so agreeably slack, you feel so 
 clean and so strong and so idle, that whether you move 
 or sit still, whatever you do is done with pride and a 
 kingly sort of pleasure. You fall in talk with any one, 
 wise or foolish, drunk or sober. And it seems as if a hot 
 walk purged you, more than of anything else, of all 
 narrowness and pride, and left curiosity to play its part 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 217 
 
 freely, as in a child or a man of science. You lay aside 
 all your own hobbies, to watch provincial humors develop 
 themselves before you, now as a laughable farce, and now 
 grave and beautiful like an old tale. 
 
 ' ' Or perhaps you are left to your own company for the 
 night, and surly weather imprisons you by the fire. You 
 may remember how Burns, numbering past pleasures, 
 dwells upon the hours when he has been ' happy think- 
 ing. ' It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor modern, 
 girt about on every side by clocks and chimes, and 
 haunted, even at night, by flaming dial-plates. For we 
 are all so busy, and have so many far-off projects to 
 realize, and castles in the fire to turn into solid habitable 
 mansions on a gravel soil, that we can find no time for 
 pleasure trips into the Land of Thought and among the 
 Hills of Vanity. Changed times, indeed, when we must 
 sit all night, beside the fire, with folded hands; and a 
 changed world for most of us, when we find we can pass 
 the hours without discontent, and be happy thinking. 
 We are in such haste to be doing, to be writing, to be 
 gathering gear, to make our voice audible a moment in 
 the derisive silence of eternity, that we forget that one 
 thing, of which these are but the parts — namely, to live. 
 We fall in love, we drink hard, we run to and fro upon 
 the earth like frightened sheep. And now you are to ask 
 yourself if, when all is done, you would not have been 
 better to sit by the fire at home, and be happy thinking. 
 To sit still and contemplate, — to remember the faces of 
 women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds 
 of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in 
 sympathy, and yet content to remain where and what you 
 are — is not this to know both wisdom and virtue, and to 
 dwell with happiness ? After all, it is not they who carry 
 
2l8 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 flags, but they who look upon it from a private chamber, 
 who have the fun of the procession. And once you are 
 at that, you are in the very humor of all social heresy. 
 It is no time for shuffling, or for big, empty words. If 
 you ask yourself what you mean by fame, riches, or learn- 
 ing, the answer is far to seek; and you go back into that 
 kingdom of light imaginations, which seem so vain in the 
 eyes of Philistines perspiring after wealth, and so moment- 
 ous to those who are stricken with the disproportions of 
 the world, and, in the face of the gigantic stars, cannot 
 stop to split differences between two degrees of the infini- 
 tesimally small, such as a tobacco-pipe or the Roman 
 Empire, a million of money or a fiddlestick's end. 
 
 " You lean from the window, your last pipe reeking 
 whitely into the darkness, your body full of delicious 
 pains, your mind enthroned in the seventh circle of con- 
 tent; when suddenly the mood changes, the weathercock 
 goes about, and you ask 3'ourself one question more; 
 whether, for the interval, you have been the wisest 
 philosopher or the most egregious of donkeys ? Human 
 experience is not yet able to reply; but at least you have 
 had a fine moment, and looked down upon all the king- 
 doms of the earth. And whether it was wise or foolish, 
 to-morrow's travel will carry you, body and mind, into 
 some different parish of the infinite." * 
 
 8. Re-read the essay, noticing its method of develop- 
 ment, the means it employs to give you certain impres- 
 sions, etc. How are the ideas in the fourth sentence 
 related to the rest of the essay ? Make this the basis for 
 an appreciative analysis of the plan. What is the func- 
 tion of every seeming digression ? Are there any real 
 
 * Stevenson. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 219 
 
 digressions ? Incidentally, define what you mean by di- 
 gression, first by means of a formal definition, next by a 
 generalized description or a generalized narrative. 
 
 9. In the following generalized narrative what is the 
 sphere of the events described ? Is it in this respect 
 wholly different from Stevenson's narrative ? Determine 
 its theme, and compare this with the fourth sentence in 
 Walking Tours. How does the treatment of the theme 
 differ ? 
 
 ' ' Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. 
 It is false to itself; or rather, it feels an irresistible im- 
 pulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under 
 its guilty possession and knows not what to do with it. 
 The human heart was not made for the residence of such 
 an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment 
 which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A 
 vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or 
 assistance either from Heaven or earth. The secret which 
 the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, 
 like the evil spirit of which we read, it overcomes him and 
 leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at 
 his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. 
 He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in 
 his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence 
 of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays 
 his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his 
 prudence. When suspicions from without begin to 
 embrace him, and the net of circumstances to entangle 
 him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence 
 to burst forth. It must be confessed, will be confessed; 
 there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and 
 suicide is confession." * 
 
 * Webster: The Murder of White. 
 
2 20 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 10. Try to express Webster's thought by means of 
 generaUzed description. Which brings the better result ? 
 Why? 
 
 LESSON XVIII. 
 
 I. Determine in the following essay the exact value of 
 every paragraph as an element in the definition. What is 
 the value of paragraph XI compared with the rest ? What 
 paragraphs may be classed together as having a similar 
 function ? What classification of the university is effected 
 in paragraphs II and III ? What relation has paragraph 
 IV to these ? 
 
 Try to describe the difference between what the defini- 
 tion meant to you as first stated in paragraph I, and what 
 it meant as stated again in paragraph XL How has this 
 change been accomplished? 
 
 I. " If I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly 
 as I could, what a University was, I should draw my 
 answer from its ancient designation of a Siudium Generale, 
 or 'School of Universal Learning.' This description 
 implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one 
 spot; — -from all parts; else, how will you find professors 
 and students for every department of knowledge ? and in 
 one spot: else, how can there be any school at all ? 
 Accordingly, in its simple and rudimental form, it is a 
 school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers 
 and learners from every quarter. Many things are requi- 
 site to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this 
 description ; but such as this a University seems to be in 
 its essence, a place for the communication and circulation 
 of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a 
 wide extent of country. 
 
 11. " There is nothing far-fetched or unreasonable in 
 the idea thus presented to us; and if this be a University, 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 221 
 
 then a University does but contemplate a necessity of our 
 nature, and is but one specimen in a particular medium, 
 out of many which might be adduced in others, of a pro- 
 vision for that necessity. Mutual education, in a large 
 sense of the word, is one of the great and incessant occu- 
 pations of human society, carried on partly with set pur- 
 pose, and partly not. One generation forms another; and 
 the existing generation is ever acting and reacting upon 
 itself in the persons of its individual members. Now, in 
 this process, books, I need scarcely say, that is, the h'/era 
 scrip/a, axe one special instrument. It is true; and 
 emphatically so in this age. Considering the prodigious 
 powers of the press, and how they are developed at this 
 time in the never-intermitting issue of periodicals, tracts, 
 pamphlets, works in series, and light literature, we must 
 allow there never was a time which promised fairer for 
 dispensing with every other means of information and 
 instruction. What can we want more, you will say, for 
 the intellectual education of the whole man, and for every 
 man, than so exuberant and diversified and persistent a 
 promulgation of all kinds of knowledge ? Why, you will 
 ask, need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge comes 
 down to us ? The Sibyl wrote her prophesies upon the 
 leaves of the forest, and wasted them ; but here such care- 
 less profusion might be prudently indulged, for it can be 
 afforded without loss, in consequence of the almost fabu- 
 lous fecundity of the instrument which these latter ages 
 have invented. We have sermons in stones, and books 
 in the running brooks; works larger and more compre- 
 hensive than those which have gained for ancients an im- 
 mortality, issue forth every morning, and are projected 
 onwards to the ends of the earth at the rate of hundreds 
 of miles a day. Our seats are strewed, our pavements 
 
222 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 are powdered, with swarms of little tracts; and the very 
 bricks of our city walls preach wisdom, by informing us 
 by their placards where we can at once cheaply pur- 
 chase it. 
 
 III. " I allow all this, and much more; such certainly 
 is our popular education, and its effects are remarkable. 
 Nevertheless, after all, even in this age, whenever men are 
 really serious about getting what, in the language of 
 trade, is called ' a good article,' when they aim at some- 
 thing precise, something refined, something really lumi- 
 nous, something really large, something choice, they go 
 to another market; they avail themselves, in some shape 
 or other, of the rival method, the ancient method, of oral 
 instruction, of present communication between man and 
 man, of teachers instead of learning, of the personal 
 influence of a master, and the humble initiation of a 
 disciple, and, in consequence, of great centers of pil- 
 grimage and throng, which such a method of education 
 necessarily involves. This, I think, will be found to hold 
 good in all those departments or aspects of society, which 
 possess an interest sufficient to bind men together, or to 
 constitute what is called ' a world. ' It holds in the 
 political world, and in the high world, and in the religious 
 world; and it holds also in the literary and scientific 
 world. 
 
 IV. " If the actions of men may be taken as any test 
 of their convictions, then we have reason for saying this, 
 viz. : — that the province and the inestimable benefit of the 
 h'/era scripla is that of being a record of truth, and an 
 authority of appeal, and an instrument of teaching in the 
 hands of a teacher; but that, if we wish to become exact 
 and fully furnished in any branch of knowledge which is 
 diversified and complicated, we must consult the living 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 223 
 
 man and listen to his living voice. I am not bound to 
 investigate the cause of this, and anything I may say will, 
 I am conscious, be short of its full analysis;— perhaps we 
 may suggest, that no books can get through the number 
 of minute questions which it is possible to ask on any 
 extended subject, or can hit upon the very difficulties 
 which are severally felt by each reader in succession. Or 
 again, that no book can convey the special spirit and 
 delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and 
 certainty which attend on the sympathy of mind with 
 mind, through the eyes, the look, the accent, and the 
 manner, in casual expressions thrown off at the moment, 
 and the unstudied turns of familiar conversation. But I 
 am already dwelling too long on what is but an incidental 
 portion of my main subject. Whatever be the cause, the 
 fact is undeniable. The general principles of any study 
 you may learn by books at home; but the detail, the 
 color, the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, 
 you must catch all these from those in whom it lives 
 already. You must imitate the student in French or 
 German, who is not content with his grammar, but goes 
 to Paris or to Dresden : you must take example from the 
 young artist, who aspires to visit the great Masters in 
 Florence and in Rome. Till we have discovered some 
 intellectual daguerreotype, which takes off the course of 
 thought, and the form, lineaments, and features of truth, 
 as completely and minutely, as the optical instrument 
 reproduces the sensible object, we must come to the 
 teachers of wisdom to learn wisdom, we must repair to 
 the fountain, and drink there. Portions of it may go 
 from thence to the ends of the earth by means of books; 
 but the fullness is in one place alone. It is in such 
 assemblages and congregations of intellect that books 
 
224 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 themselves, the masterpieces of human genius, are written, 
 or at least originated. 
 
 V. "The principle on which I have been insisting is 
 so obvious, and instances in point are so ready, that I 
 should think it tiresome to proceed with the subject, 
 except that one or two illustrations may serve to explain 
 my own language about it, which may not have done 
 justice to the doctrine which it has been intended to 
 enforce. 
 
 VI. " For instance, the polished mannea-s and high- 
 bred bearing which are so difficult of attainment, and so 
 strictly personal when attained, — which are so much 
 admired in society, from society are acquired. All that 
 goes to constitute a gentleman, — the carriage, gait, 
 address, gestures, voice; the ease, the self-possession, the 
 courtesy, the power of conversing, the talent of not 
 offending; the lofty principle, the delicacy of thought, 
 the- happiness of expression, the taste and propriety, the 
 generosity and forbearance, the candor and consideration, 
 the openness of hand; — these qualities, some of them 
 come by nature, some of them may be found in any rank, 
 some of them are a direct precept of Christianity; but the 
 full assemblage of them, bound up in the unity of an 
 individual character, do we expect they can be learned 
 from books ? are they not necessarily acquired, where 
 they are to be found, in high society ? The very nature 
 of the case leads us to say so; you cannot fence without 
 an antagonist, nor challenge all comers in disputation 
 before you have supported a thesis; and in like manner, 
 it stands to reason, you cannot learn to converse till you 
 have the world to converse with ; you cannot unlearn 
 your natural bashfulness, or awkwardness, or stiffness, or 
 other besetting deformity, till you serve your time in some 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 22$ 
 
 school of manners. Well, and is it not so in matter of 
 fact ? The metropolis, the court, the great houses of the 
 land, are the centers to which at stated times the country 
 comes up, as to shrines of refinement and good taste; and 
 then in due time the country goes back again home, 
 enriched with a portion of the social accomplishments, 
 which those very visits serve to call out and heighten in 
 the gracious dispensers of them. We are unable to con- 
 ceive how the ' gentlemanlike ' can otherwise be main- 
 tained; and maintained in this way it is. 
 
 VII. ' ' And now a second instance : and here too I 
 am going to speak without personal experience of the 
 subject I am introducing. I admit I have not been in 
 Parliament, any more than I have figured in the 6eau 
 monde; yet I cannot but think that statesmanship, as well 
 as high breeding, is learned, not by books, but in certain 
 centers of education. If it be not presumption to say so. 
 Parliament puts a clever man au courant with politics and 
 affairs of state in a way surprising to himself. A member 
 of the Legislature, if tolerably observant, begins to see 
 things with new eyes, even though his views undergo no 
 change. Words have a meaning now, and ideas a reality, 
 such as they had not before. He hears a vast deal in 
 public speeches and private conversation, which is never 
 put into print. The bearings of measures and events, the 
 action of parties, and the persons of friends and enemies, 
 are brought out to the man who is in the midst of them, 
 with a distinctness which the most diligent perusal of 
 newspapers will fail to impart to them. It is access to 
 the fountain-heads of political wisdom and experience, it 
 is daily intercourse, of one kind or another, with the 
 multitude who go up to them, it is familiarity with busi- 
 ness, it is access to the contributions of fact and opinion 
 
2 26 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 thrown together by many witnesses from many quarters, 
 which does this for him. However, I need not account 
 for a fact, to which it is sufficient to appeal; that the 
 Houses of Parliament and the atmosphere around them 
 are a sort of University of politics. 
 
 Vni. ' ' As regards the world of science, we find a 
 remarkable instance of the principle which I am illustrat- 
 ing, in the periodical meetings for its advance, which have 
 arisen in the course of the last twenty years, such as the 
 British Association. Such gatherings would to many 
 persons appear at first sight simply preposterous. Above 
 all subjects of study, Science is conveyed, is propagated, 
 by books, or by private teaching; experiments and inves- 
 tigations are conducted in silence; discoveries are made 
 in solitude. What have philosophers to do with festive 
 celebrities, and panegyrical solemnities with mathematical 
 and physical truth ? Yet on a closer attention to the 
 subject, it is found that not even scientific thought can 
 dispense with the suggestions, the instruction, the stimu- 
 las, the sympathy, the intercourse with mankind on a 
 large scale, which such meetings secure. A fine time of 
 year is chosen, when days are long, skies are bright, the 
 earth smiles, and all nature rejoices; a city or town is 
 taken by turns, of ancient name or modern opulence, 
 where buildings are spacious and hospitality hearty. The 
 novelty of place and circumstance, the excitement of 
 strange, or the refreshment of well-known faces, the 
 majesty of rank or of genius, the amiable charities of men 
 pleased both with themselves and with each other; the 
 elevated spirits, the circulation of thought, the curiosity; 
 the morning sections, the outdoor exercise, the well- 
 furnished, well-earned board, the not ungraceful hilarity, 
 the evening circle; the brilliant lecture, the discussions 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 227 
 
 or collisions or guesses of great men one with another, 
 the narratives of scientific processes, of hopes, disappoint- 
 ments, conflicts, and successes, the splendid eulogistic 
 orations; these and the like constituents of the annual 
 celebration, are considered to do something real and sub- 
 stantial for the advance of knowledge which can be done 
 in no other way. Of course they can but be occasional ; 
 they answer to the annual Act, or Commencement, or 
 Commemoration of a University, not to its ordinary con- 
 dition; but they are of a University nature; and I can 
 well believe in their utility. They issue in the promotion 
 of a certain living and, as it were, bodily communication 
 of knowledge from one to another, of a general inter- 
 change of ideas, and a comparison and adjustment of 
 science with science, of an enlargement of mind, intellec- 
 tual and social, of an ardent love of the particular study, 
 which may be chosen by each individual, and a noble 
 devotion to its interests. 
 
 IX. " Such meetings, I repeat, are but periodical, and 
 only partially represent the idea of a University. The 
 bustle and whirl which are their usual concomitants, are 
 in ill keeping with the order and gravity of earnest intel- 
 lectual education. We desiderate means of instruction 
 which involve no interruption of our ordinary habits; nor 
 need we seek it long, for the natural course of things 
 brings it about, while we debate over it. In every great 
 country, the metropolis itself becomes a sort of necessary 
 University, whether we will or no. As the chief city is 
 the seat of the court, of high society, of politics, and of 
 law, so as a matter of course is it the seat of letters also; 
 and at this time, for a long term of years, London and 
 Paris are in fact and in operation Universities, though in 
 Paris its famous University is no more, and in London a 
 
228 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 University scarcely exists except as a board of administra- 
 tion. The newspapers, magazines, reviews, journals, and 
 periodicals of all kinds, the publishing trade, the libraries, 
 museums, and academies there found, the learned and 
 scientific societies, necessarily invest it with the functions 
 of a University; and that atmosphere of intellect, which 
 in a former age hung over Oxford or Bologna or Sala- 
 manca, has, with the change of times, moved away to the 
 center of civil government. Thither come up youths from 
 all parts of the country, the students of law, medicine, 
 and the fine arts, and the employes and attaches of litera- 
 ture. There they live, as chance determines; and they 
 are satisfied with their temporary home, for they find in 
 it all that was promised to them there. They have not 
 come in vain, as far as their own object in coming is con- 
 cerned. They have not learned any particular religion, 
 but they have learned their own particular profession well. 
 They have, moreover, become acquainted with the habits, 
 manners, and opinions of their place of sojourn, and done 
 their part in maintaining the tradition of them. We 
 cannot then be without virtual Universities; a metropolis 
 is such : the simple question is, whether the education 
 sought and given should be based on principle, formed 
 upon rule, directed to the highest ends, or left to the 
 random succession of masters and schools, one after 
 another, with a melancholy waste of thought and an 
 extreme hazard of truth. 
 
 X. " Religious teaching itself affords us an illustration 
 of our subject to a certain point. It does not indeed seat 
 itself merely in centers of the world; this is impossible 
 from the nature of the case. It is intended for the many 
 not the few; its subject-matter is truth necessary for us, 
 not truth recondite and rare; but it concurs in the prin- 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS REL/ITION TO EXPOSITION. 229 
 
 ciple ol a University so far as this, that its great instru- 
 ment, or rather organ, has ever been that which nature 
 prescribes in all education the personal presence of a 
 teacher, or, in theological language. Oral Tradition. It 
 is the living voice, the breathing form, the expressive 
 countenance, which preaches, which catechises. Truth, 
 a subtle, invisible, manifold spirit, is poured into the 
 mind of the scholar by his eyes and ears, through his 
 affections, imaginations, and reason; it is poured into his 
 mind and is sealed up there in perpetuity, by propound- 
 ing and repeating it, by questioning and re-questioning, 
 by correcting and explaining, by progressing and then 
 recurring to first principles, by all those ways which are 
 implied in the word ' catechising. ' In the first ages, it 
 was a work of long time; months, sometimes years, were 
 devoted to the arduous task of disabusing the mind of 
 the incipient Christian of its pagan errors, and of mould- 
 ing it upon the Christian faith. The Scriptures indeed 
 were at hand for the study of those who could avail them- 
 selves of them ; but St. Irenseus does not hesitate to speak 
 of whole races, who had been converted to Christianity, 
 without being able to read them. To be unable to read 
 or write was in those times no evidence of want of learn- 
 ing : the hermits of the deserts were, in this sense of the 
 word, illiterate; yet the great St. Anthony, though he 
 knew not letters, was a match in disputation for the 
 learned philosophers who came to try him. Didymus 
 again, the great Alexandrian theologian, was blind. The 
 ancient discipline, called the Disciplina Arcani, involved 
 the same principle. The more sacred doctrines of Reve- 
 lation were not committed to books but passed on by 
 successive tradition. The teaching on the Blessed Trinity 
 and the Eucharist appears to have been so handed down 
 
230 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 for some hundred years; and when at length reduced to 
 writing, it has filled many folios, yet has not been 
 exhausted. 
 
 XI. " But I have said more than enough in illustration; 
 I end as 1 began; — a University is a place of concourse, 
 whither students come from every quarter for every kind 
 of knowledge. You cannot have the best of every kind 
 everywhere; you must go to some great city or emporium 
 for it. There you have all the choicest productions of 
 nature and art all together, which you find each in its 
 own separate place elsewhere. All the riches of the land, 
 and of the earth, are carried up thither; there are the best 
 markets, and there the best workmen. It is the center 
 of trade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpire of rival 
 talents, and the standard of things rare and precious. It 
 is the place for seeing galleries of first-rate pictures, and 
 for hearing wonderful voices and performers of transcend- 
 ent skill. It is the place for great preachers, great 
 orators, great nobles, great statesmen. In the nature of 
 things, greatness and unity go together; excellence 
 implies a center. And such, for the third or fourth time, 
 is a University; I hope I do not weary out the reader by 
 repeating it. It is the place to which a thousand schools 
 make contributions; in which the intellect may safely 
 range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antag- 
 onist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It 
 is a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries 
 verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, 
 and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, 
 and knowledge with knowledge. It is the place where 
 the professor becomes eloquent, and is a missionary and 
 a preacher, displaying his science in its most complete 
 and most winning form, pouring it forth with the zeal of 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 231 
 
 enthusiasm, and lighting up his own love of it in the 
 breasts of his hearers. It is the place where the catechist 
 makes good his ground as he goes, treading in the truth 
 day by day into the ready memory, and wedging and 
 tightening it into the expanding reason. It is a place 
 which wins the admiration of the young by its celebrity, 
 kindles the affections of the middle aged by its beauty, 
 and rivets the fidelity of the old by its associations. It is 
 a seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of the 
 faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation. It is this 
 and a great deal more, and demands a somewhat better 
 head and hand than mine to describe it well. 
 
 XII. " Such is a University in its idea and in its pur- 
 pose; such in good measure has it before now been in fact. 
 Shall it ever be again .? We are going forward in the 
 strength of the Cross, under the patronage of the Blessed 
 Virgin, in the name of St. Patrick, to attempt it. " * 
 
 2. Tabulate the following definitions so as to show the 
 classification and discrimination involved in them : 
 
 Religion is morality touched with emotion, f 
 Curiosity is a liberal and intelligent eagerness about 
 
 the things of the mind. J 
 
 A Philistine is a strong, dogged opponent of the chosen 
 
 people, of the children of light. § 
 
 3. The following passage embodies — with comic color- 
 ing, to be sure — -a definition. It was in fact the only 
 definition which would have served the purpose. If this 
 be doubted, try to make other definitions such as would 
 meet Miss Pellicoe's needs. 
 
 * Newman: Tke Rise and Progress of Universities, Chap. II. 
 
 t Arnold : Literature and Dogma, Chap. I, ii, 
 
 X lb.: Culture and Anarchy, pp. 5-6. 
 
 § lb.. Essays in Criticism; First Series, p. 163. 
 
232 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 " ' Sir, ' she said, in true Johnsonian style, ' what height 
 should a mastiff dog attain at the age of six months ? ' 
 
 " The policeman stared at her in utter astonishment. 
 
 "'They do be all sizes. Mum,' he replied blankly, 
 ' like a piece of cheese. ' 
 
 " ' My relative in the West,' explained Miss Pellicoe, 
 ' has sent me a dog, and I am given to understand that 
 his age is six months. As he is phenomenally large, I 
 have thought it best to seek for information. Has my 
 relative been imposed upon ? ' 
 
 "'It's har-r-rd to tell, Mum,' replied the policeman 
 dubiously. Then his countenance brightened. ' Does 
 his feet fit him .•' ' he inquired. 
 
 " ' What, — what do you mean .? ' asked Miss Pellicoe, 
 shrinking back a little. 
 
 " ' Is his feet like blackin' boxes on th' end of his 
 legs ? ' 
 
 ' ' ' They are certainly very large. ' 
 
 " ' Thin 'tis a pup. You see. Mum, with a pup, 'tis 
 this way. The feet starts first, an' the pup grows up to 
 'em like. Av they match him, he's grown. Av he has 
 arctics on, he's a pup.' " * 
 
 4. Express, in the form of a table or diagram, the chief 
 definition involved in the following exposition, and also 
 the subordinate definitions used to make the chief one 
 clear. 
 
 ' ' Let us ask ourselves — What is education ? Above all 
 things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal educa- 
 tion ? — of that education which, if we could begin life 
 again, we would give ourselves — of that education which, 
 if we could mould the fates to our own will, we would 
 
 * H. C Bunner: Short Sixes ; Hector. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 233 
 
 give our children. Well, I know not what may be your 
 conceptions upon this matter, but I will tell you mine, 
 and I hope I shall find that our views are not very dis- 
 crepant. 
 
 ' ' Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and 
 fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, 
 depend upon his winning or losing a game at chess. 
 Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a 
 primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of 
 the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye 
 for all the means of giving and getting out of check ? 
 Do you not think that we should look with a disapproba- 
 tion amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his 
 son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up 
 without knowing a pawn from a knight ? 
 
 ' ' Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the 
 life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, 
 and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do 
 depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a 
 game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. 
 It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every 
 man and woman of us being one of the two players in a 
 game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, 
 the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of 
 the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The 
 player on the other side is hidden from us. We know 
 that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also 
 we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, 
 or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the 
 man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that 
 sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows 
 delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated 
 — without haste, but without remorse. 
 
234 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 ' ' My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous 
 picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at 
 chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking 
 fiend in that picture, a calm, strong'angel who is playing 
 for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win — and 
 I should accept it as an image of human life. 
 
 " Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules 
 of this mighty game. In other words, education is the 
 instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under 
 which name I include not merely things and their forces, 
 but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affec- 
 tions and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to 
 move in harmony with those laws. For me, education 
 means neither more nor less than this. Anything which 
 professes to call itself education must be tried by this 
 standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it 
 education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of 
 numbers, upon the other side. 
 
 "It is important to remember that, in strictness, there 
 is no such thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme 
 case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigor of his 
 faculties, could be suddenly placed in the world, as 
 Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best 
 might. How long would he be left uneducated 1 Not 
 five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through 
 the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. 
 Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do 
 this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would 
 receive an education which, if narrow, would be thorough, 
 real, and adequate to his circumstances, though there 
 would be no extras and very few accomplishments. 
 
 " And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, 
 or, better still, an Eve, a new and greater world, that of 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 235 
 
 social and moral phenomena, would be revealed. Joys 
 and woes, compared with which all others might seem but 
 faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. 
 Happiness and sorrow would take the place of the coarser 
 monitors, pleasure and pain; but conduct would still be 
 shaped by the observation of the natural consequences of 
 actions ; or, in other words, by the laws of the nature of 
 man. 
 
 ' ' To every one of us the world was once as fresh and 
 new as to Adam. And then, long before we were suscepti- 
 ble of any other mode of instruction. Nature took us in 
 hand, and every minute of waking life brought its educa- 
 tional influence, shaping our actions into rough accord- 
 ance with Nature's laws, so that we might not be ended 
 untimely by too gross disobedience. Nor should I speak 
 of this process of education as past for any one, be he as 
 old as he may. For every man the world is as fresh as 
 it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for 
 him who has the eyes to see them. And Nature is still 
 continuing her patient education of us in that great 
 university, the universe, of which we are all members — 
 Nature having no Test -Acts. 
 
 "Those who take honors in Nature's university, who 
 learn the laws which govern men and things and obey 
 them, are the really great and successful men in this world. 
 The great mass of mankind are the ' Poll, ' who pick up 
 just enough to get through without much discredit. 
 Those who won't learn at all are plucked; and then you 
 can't come up again. Nature's pluck means extermina- 
 tion. 
 
 " Thus the question of compulsory education is settled 
 30 far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question 
 was framed and passed long ago. But, like all compuU 
 
236 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 sory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful in 
 its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as willful 
 disobedience — incapacity meets with the same punishment 
 as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and a 
 blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. 
 It is left you to find out why your ears are boxed. 
 
 "The object of what we commonly call education — 
 that education in which man intervenes and which I shall 
 distinguish as artificial education — is to make good these 
 defects in Nature's methods; to prepare the child to 
 receive Nature's education, neither incapably nor igno- 
 rantly, nor with willful disobedience; and to understand 
 the preliminary symptoms of her displeasure, without 
 waiting for the box on the ear. In short, all artificial 
 education ought to be an anticipation of natural educa- 
 tion. And a liberal education is an artificial education 
 which has not only prepared a man to escape the great 
 evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him 
 to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards, which Nature 
 scatters with as free a hand as her penalties. 
 
 " That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who 
 has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready 
 servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the 
 work, that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intel- 
 lect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of 
 equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like 
 a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and 
 spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the 
 mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the 
 great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of 
 her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life 
 and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel 
 by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 237 
 
 who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or 
 of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as him- 
 self. 
 
 " Such an one, and no other, I conceive, has had a 
 liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can 
 be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best 
 of her, and she of him. They will get on together 
 rarely ; she as his ever-beneficent mother, he as her 
 mouth-piece, her conscious self, her minister and inter- 
 preter. ' ' * 
 
 5. " This is the true nature of home — it is the place of 
 Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all 
 terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, 
 it is not home: so far as the anxieties of the outer life 
 penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, 
 unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed 
 by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases 
 to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world 
 which you have roofed over, and lighted a fire in. But so 
 far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the 
 hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose 
 faces none may come but those whom they can receive 
 with love — so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types 
 only of a nobler shade and light, — shade as of the rock in 
 a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy 
 sea; — so far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, 
 of home. " f 
 
 6. In the following discourse, how does the writer 
 manage to present his idea so that it is not " shocking to 
 common sense " ? 
 
 * Huxley: Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews. 
 f Ruskin: Sesame and Lilies ; Of Querns' Gardens. 
 
238 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 7. From the essay, write a definition of protoplasm, 
 first in a short paragraph, then in a sentence. 
 
 The Physical Basis of Life. 
 
 " In order to make the title of this discourse generally 
 intelligible, I have translated the term ' Protoplasm,' which 
 is the scientific name of the substance of which I am about 
 to speak, by the words ' the physical basis of life.' I sup- 
 pose that, to many, the idea that there is such a thing as 
 a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel — so widely 
 spread is the conception of life as a something which 
 works through matter, but is independent of it ; and 
 even those who are aware that matter and life are insepa- 
 rably connected, may not be prepared for the conclusion 
 plainly suggested by the phrase, ' /he physical basis or mat- 
 ter of life,' that there is some one kind of matter which 
 is common to all living beings, and that their endless di- 
 versities are bound together by a physical, as well as an 
 ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended, such a doc- 
 trine as this appears almost shocking to common sense. 
 
 " What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different 
 from one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, 
 than the various kinds of living beings ? What com- 
 munity of faculty can there be between the brightly col- 
 ored lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral 
 incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the 
 painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, 
 whom it feeds with knowledge ? 
 
 "Again, think of the microscopic fungus — a mere in- 
 finitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration 
 enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of 
 a living fly ; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuri- 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 239 
 
 ance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald 
 sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, tower- 
 ing to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian 
 fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and en- 
 dures while nations and empires come and go around its 
 vast circumference. Or, turning to the other half of the 
 world of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, 
 hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his 
 eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with 
 easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest ship that 
 ever left dockyard would flounder hopelessly ; and con- 
 trast him with the invisible animalcules — mere gelatinous 
 specks, multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon 
 the point of a needle with the same ease as the angels of 
 the Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these images 
 before your minds, you may well ask, what community of 
 form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and 
 the whale ; or between the fungus and the fig-tree ? And, 
 a fortiori, between all four? 
 
 ' ' Finally, if we regard substance, or material composi- 
 tion, what hidden bond can connect the flower which a 
 girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses through 
 her youthful veins ; or, what is there in common between 
 the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric 
 of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which 
 may be seen pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, 
 but which drain away to mere films in the hand which 
 raises them out of their element ? 
 
 " Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the 
 mind of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon 
 the conception of a single physical basis of life underlying 
 all the diversities of vital existence ; but I propose to 
 demonstrate to you, that, notwithstanding these apparent 
 
2 40 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 difficulties, a threefold unity — namely, a unity of power 
 or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial com- 
 position — does pervade the whole living world. 
 
 "No very abstruse argumentation is needed in the first 
 place to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of 
 living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are sub- 
 stantially similar in kind. 
 
 " Goethe has condensed a survey of all powers of man- 
 kind into the well-known epigram : — 
 
 " ' Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich 
 ernahren 
 Kinder zeugen, und die nahren so gut es verraag. 
 ******* 
 
 Welter brlngt es kein Mensch, stell' er sich wie er auch 
 
 will.' 
 
 "In physiological language, this means that all the 
 multifarious and complicated activities of man are compre- 
 hensible under three categories. Either they are immedi- 
 ately directed towards the maintenance and development 
 of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the rela- 
 tive positions of parts of the body, or they tend towards 
 the continuance of the species. Even those manifestations 
 of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name 
 the higher faculties, are not excluded from this classifica- 
 tion, inasmuch as to every one but the subject of them, 
 they are known only as transitory changes in the relative 
 positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every 
 other form of human action are, in the long run, resolva- 
 ble into muscular contraction, and muscular contraction 
 is but a transitory change in the relative positions of the 
 parts of a muscle. But the scheme which is large enough 
 to embrace the activities of the highest form of life, covers 
 all those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant, or 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 241 
 
 animalcule, feeds, grows, and reproduces its kind. In 
 addition, all animals manife&t those transitory changes of 
 form which we class under irritability and contractility ; 
 and it is more than probable, that when the vegetable 
 world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all plants in 
 possession of the same powers, at one time or other of 
 their existence. 
 
 " I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once 
 rare and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of 
 the sensitive plants, or the stamens of the barberry, but to 
 much more widely spread, and at the same time more 
 subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contrac- 
 tility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle 
 owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff and 
 needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover 
 its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad base 
 to a slender summit, which, though rounded at the end, is 
 of such microscopic fineness that it readily penetrates, and 
 breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair consists of a very 
 delicate outer case of wood, closely applied to the inner 
 surface of which is a layer of semi-fluid matter, full of in- 
 numerable granules of extreme minuteness. This semi- 
 fluid lining is protoplasm, which thus constitutes a kind of 
 bag, full of limpid liquid, and roughly corresponding in 
 form with the interior of the hair which it fills. When 
 viewed with a sufficiently high magnifying power, the 
 protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is seen to be in a con- 
 dition of unceasing activity. Local contractions of the 
 whole thickness of its substance pass slowly and gradually 
 from point to point, and give rise to the appearance of 
 progressive waves, just as the bending of successive stalks 
 of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a 
 cornfield. 
 
242 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 "But, in addition to these movements, and independ- 
 ently of them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid 
 streams, through channels in the protoplasm which seem 
 to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most 
 commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the proto- 
 plasm take similar directions ; and, thus, there is a gen- 
 eral stream up one side of the hair and down the other. 
 But this does not prevent the existence of partial currents 
 which take different routes; and sometimes trains of gran- 
 ules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite directions 
 within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another ; 
 while, occasionally, opposite streams come into direct col- 
 lision, and, after a longer or shorter struggle, one pre- 
 dominates. The cause of these currents seems to lie in 
 contractions of the protoplasm which bounds the channels 
 in which they flow, but which are so minute that the best 
 microscopes show only their effects, and not themselves. 
 
 "The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies 
 prisoned within the compass of the microscopic hair of a 
 plant, which we commonly regard as a merely passive or- 
 ganism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched its 
 display, continued hour after hour, without pause or sign 
 of weakening. The possible complexity of many other 
 organic forms, seemingly as simple as the protoplasm of 
 the nettle, dawns upon one ; and the comparison of such 
 a protoplasm to a body with an internal circulation, which 
 has been put forward by an eminent physiologist, loses 
 much of its startling character. Currents similar to those 
 of the hairs of the nettle have been observed in a great 
 multitude of very different plants, and weighty authorities 
 have suggested that they probably occur, in more or less 
 perfection, in all young vegetable cells. If such be the 
 case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 243 
 
 after all, due only to the dullness of our hearing ; and 
 could our ears catch the murmur of these tiny Maelstroms, 
 as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells 
 which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with 
 the roar of a great city. 
 
 " Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the 
 exception, that contractility should be still more openly 
 manifested at some periods of their existence. The proto- 
 plasm of Algw and Fungi becomes, under many circum- 
 stances, partially or completely, freed from its woody case, 
 and exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled 
 by the contractility of one, or more, hair-like prolongations 
 of its body, which are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as 
 the conditions of the manifestation of the phenomena of 
 contractility have yet been studied, they are the same for 
 the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric shocks in- 
 fluence both, and in the same way, though it may be in 
 different degrees. It is by no means my intention to sug- 
 gest that there is no difference in faculty between the lowest 
 plant and the highest, or between plants and animals. 
 But the difference between the powers of the lowest plant, 
 or animal, and those of the highest, is one of degree, not 
 of kind, and depends, as Milne- Edwards long ago so well 
 pointed out, upon the extent to which the principle of the 
 division of labor is carried out in the living economy. In 
 the lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all 
 functions, and one and the same portion of protoplasm 
 may successively take on the function of feeding, moving, 
 or reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the con- 
 trary, a great number of parts combine to perform each 
 function, each part doing its allotted share of the work 
 with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless for 
 any other purpose. 
 
244 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY MERITING. 
 
 "On the other hand, notwithstanding all the funda- 
 mental resemblances which exist between the powers of 
 the protoplasm in plants and in animals, they present a 
 striking difference (to which I shall advert more at length 
 presently), in the fact that plants can manufacture fresh 
 protoplasm out of mineral compounds, whereas animals 
 are obliged to procure it ready made, and hence, in the 
 long run, depend upon plants. Upon what condition 
 this difference in the powers of the two great divisions of 
 the world of life depends, nothing is at present known. 
 
 " With such qualifications as arise out of the last-men- 
 tioned fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living 
 things are fundamentally one. Is any such unity pred- 
 icable of their forms ? Let us seek in easily verified facts 
 for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn 
 by pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precau- 
 tions, and under a sufficiently high microscopic power, 
 there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude of 
 little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles, which 
 float in it and give it its color, a comparatively small 
 number of colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size 
 and very irregular shape. If the drop of blood be kept 
 at the temperature of the body, these colorless corpus- 
 cles will be seen to exhibit a marvelous activity, changing 
 their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and thrusting 
 out prolongations of their substance, and creeping about 
 as if they were independent organisms. 
 
 " The substance which is thus active is a mass of 
 protoplasm, and its activity differs in detail, rather than 
 in principle, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. 
 Under sundry circumstances the corpuscle dies and 
 becomes distended into a round mass, in the midst of 
 which is seen a smaller spherical body which existed, but 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 245 
 
 was more or less hidden, in the Hving corpuscle, and is 
 called its nucleus. Corpuscles of essentially similar struc- 
 ture are to be found in the skin, in the lining of the 
 mouth, and scattered through the whole framework of the 
 body. Nay, more; in the earliest condition of the human 
 organism, in that state in which it has but just become 
 distinguishable from the e.gg in which it arises, it is noth- 
 ing but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every 
 organ of the body was, once, no more than such an 
 aggregation. 
 
 ' ' Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be 
 what may be termed the structural unit of the human 
 body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, 
 is a mere multiple of such units; and in its perfect con- 
 dition, it is a multiple of such units variously modified. 
 
 ' ' But does the formula which expresses the essential 
 structural character of the highest animal cover all the 
 rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties covered 
 that of all others ? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile 
 and fish, mollusk, worm, and polype, are all composed 
 of structural units of the same character, namely, masses 
 of protoplasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low 
 animals, each of which, structurally, is a mere colorless 
 blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at 
 the very bottom of the animal scale, even this simplicity 
 becomes simplified, and all the phenomena of life are 
 manifested by a particle of protoplasm without a nucleus. 
 Nor are such organisms insignificant by reason of their 
 want of complexity. It is a fair question whether the 
 protoplasm of those simplest forms of life, which people 
 an immense extent of the bottom of the sea, would not 
 outweigh that of all the higher living beings which inhabit 
 the land put together. And in ancient times, no less 
 
246 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 than at the present day, such living beings as these have 
 been the greatest of rock builders. 
 
 " What has been said of the animal world is no less 
 true of plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad, 
 or attached, end of the nettle hair, there lies a spheroidal 
 nucleus. Careful examination further proves that the 
 whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition 
 of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each contained 
 in a wooden case, which is modified in form, sometimes 
 into a woody fiber, sometimes into a duct or spiral vessel, 
 sometimes into a pollen grain, or an ovule. Traced back 
 to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in 
 a particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest 
 plants, as in the lowest animals, a single mass of such 
 protoplasm may constitute the whole plant, or the proto- 
 plasm may exist without a nucleus. 
 
 " Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how 
 is one mass of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distin- 
 guished from another ? why call one ' plant ' and the 
 other ' animal ' ? 
 
 ' ' The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned, 
 plants and animals are not separable, and that, in many 
 cases, it is a mere matter of convention whether we call a 
 given organism an animal or a plant. There is a living 
 body called ^thalium septicum, which appears upon 
 decaying vegetable substances, and, in one of its forms, 
 is common upon the surfaces of tan-pits. In this condi- 
 tion it is, to all intents and purposes, a fungus, and 
 formerly was always regarded as such ; but the remarkable 
 investigations of De Bary have shown that, in another 
 condition, the /Ethalium is an actively locomotive crea- 
 ture, and takes in solid matters, upon which, apparently, 
 it feeds, thus exhibiting the most characteristic feature of 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 247 
 
 animality. Is this a plant; or is it an animal? Is it 
 both; or is it neither? Some decide in favor of the last 
 supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a 
 sort of biological No Man's Land for all these question- 
 able forms. But, as it is admittedly impossible to draw 
 any distinct boundary line between this no man's land 
 and the vegetable world on the one hand, or the animal, 
 on the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely 
 doubles the difficulty which, before, was single. 
 
 " Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis 
 of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it 
 and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, 
 and not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun- 
 dried clod. 
 
 "Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are 
 cognate, and that all living forms are fundamentally of 
 one character. The researches of the chemist have 
 revealed a no less striking uniformity of material composi- 
 tion in living matter. 
 
 ' ' In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investi- 
 gation can tell us little or nothing, directly, of the com- 
 position of living matter, inasmuch as such matter must 
 needs die in the act of analysis, — and upon this very 
 obvious ground, objections, which I confess seem to me 
 to be somewhat frivolous, have been raised to the drawing 
 of any conclusions whatever respecting the composition 
 of actually living matter, from that of the dead matter of 
 life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors of 
 this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strict- 
 ness, true that we know nothing about the composition 
 of any body whatever, as it is. The statement that a 
 crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is quite 
 true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it 
 
248 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 may be resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime. If 
 you pass the same carbonic acid over the very quicklime 
 thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime again; 
 but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it, 
 therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing 
 about the chemical composition of calc-spar ? Such a 
 statement would be absurd; but it is hardly more so than 
 the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness of 
 applying the results of chemical analysis to the livmg 
 bodies which have yielded them. 
 
 " One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refine- 
 ments, and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which 
 have yet been examined contain the four elements, car- 
 bon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex 
 union, and that they behave similarly towards several 
 re-agents. To this complex combmation, the nature of 
 which has never been determined with exactness, the 
 name of Proteine has been applied. And if we use this 
 term with such caution as may properly arise out of our 
 comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands, 
 it may be truly said, that all protoplasm is proteinaceous, 
 or, as the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the com- 
 monest examples of a nearly pure proteine matter, we 
 may say that all living matter is more or less albuminoid. 
 
 " Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms 
 of protoplasm are affected by the direct action of electric 
 shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the con- 
 traction of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this 
 agency increases every day. 
 
 " Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence, that 
 all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar 
 coagulation at a temperature of 40°-5o'' centigrade, which 
 has been called ' heat-stiffening,' though Kiihne's beauti- 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 249 
 
 ful researches have proved this occurrence to take place 
 in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is 
 hardly rash to expect that the law holds good for all. 
 
 " Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the exist- 
 ence of a general uniformity in the character of the proto- 
 plasm, or physical basis, of life, in whatever group of 
 living beings it may be studied. But it will be understood 
 that this general uniformity by no means excludes any 
 amount of special modifications of the fundamental sub- 
 stance. The mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an 
 immense diversity of characters, though no one doubts 
 that, under all these Protean changes, it is one and the 
 same thing. 
 
 "And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the 
 origin, of the matter of life ? 
 
 "Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, 
 diffused throughout the universe in molecules, which are 
 indestructible and unchangeable in themselves; but, in 
 endless transmigration, unite in innumerable permuta- 
 tions, into the diversified forms of life we know ? Or, is 
 the matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing 
 from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggre- 
 gated .'' Is it built up of ordinary matter, and again 
 resolved into ordinary matter, when its work is done ? 
 
 " Modern science does not hesitate for a moment 
 between these alternatives. Physiology writes over the 
 portals of life — • 
 
 ' Debemur morti nos nostraque,' 
 
 with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached 
 to that melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it 
 takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the 
 living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved 
 
2SO A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always 
 dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not 
 live unless it died. 
 
 " In the wonderful story of the Peau de Chagrin, the 
 hero becomes possessed of a magical Mild ass' skin, which 
 yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its 
 surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; 
 and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion 
 to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the 
 last handbreadth of the peau de chagrin, disappear with 
 the gratification of a last wish. 
 
 " Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of 
 thought and speculation, and his shadowing forth of 
 physiological truth in this strange story may have been 
 intentional. At an}- rate, the matter of life is a veritable 
 peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is somewhat the 
 smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life 
 results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm. 
 
 "Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some 
 physical loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that 
 others may have light — so much eloquence, so much of 
 his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It 
 is clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on 
 forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic peau de chagrin 
 differs from Balzac's in its capacity of being repaired, and 
 brought back to its full size, after every exertion. 
 
 " For example, this present lecture, whatever its intel- 
 lectual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, 
 which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains 
 of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in 
 maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My 
 peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end of the 
 discourse than it was at the beginning. By and by, I 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS REL/ITION TO EXPOSITION. ^$1 
 
 shall probably have recourse to the substance commonly 
 called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its 
 original size. Now this mutton was once the living 
 protoplasm, more or less modified, of another animal — a 
 sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same matter altered, 
 not only by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial 
 operations in the process of cooking. 
 
 ' ' But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not 
 rendered it incompetent to resume its old functions as 
 matter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which I 
 possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the modified 
 protoplasm; the solution so formed will pass into my 
 veins; and the subtle influences to which it will then be 
 subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into living 
 protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man. 
 
 " Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled 
 with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of 
 the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful meta- 
 morphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my 
 own place by the sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crus- 
 tacean might, and probably would, return the compli- 
 ment, and demonstrate our common nature by turning 
 my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better 
 were to be had, I might supply my wants with mere 
 bread, and I should find the protoplasm of the wheat- 
 plant to be convertible into man, with no more trouble 
 than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than 
 that of the lobster. 
 
 " Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment 
 what animal or what plant I lay under contribution for 
 protoplasm, and the fact speaks volumes for the general 
 identity of that substance in all living beings. I share 
 this catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of 
 
252 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on 
 the protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; 
 but here the assimilative powers of the animal world 
 cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an 
 infinitesimal portion of some other saline matter, contains 
 all the elementary bodies which enter into the composi- 
 tion of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead 
 of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from starving, 
 nor would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. 
 An animal cannot make protoplasm, but must take it 
 ready-made from some other animal or some plant — the 
 animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry being to 
 convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life 
 which is appropriate to itself. 
 
 "Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm 
 we must eventually turn to the vegetable worid. A fluid 
 containing carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts, 
 which' offers such a Barmecide feast to the animal, is a 
 table richly spread to multitudes of plants; and, with a 
 due supply of only such materials, many a plant will not 
 only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multiply until 
 it has increased a million-fold, or a million million-fold, 
 the quantity of protoplasm which it originally possessed; 
 in this way building up the matter of life, to an indefinite 
 extent, from the common matter of the universe. 
 
 " Thus, the animal can only raise the complex sub- 
 stance of dead protoplasm to the higher power, as one 
 may say, of living protoplasm; while the plant can raise 
 the less complex substances — carbonic acid, water, and 
 nitrogenous salts — to the same stage of living proto- 
 plasm, if not to the same level. But the plant also has 
 its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example, appear 
 to need higher compounds to start with; and no known 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 253 
 
 plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of 
 protoplasm. A plant supplied with pure carbon, hy- 
 drogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and 
 the like, v/ould as infallibly die as the animal in his bath 
 of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all 
 the constituents of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the 
 process of simplification of vegetable food be carried so 
 far as this, in order to arrive at the limit of the plant's 
 thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all the 
 other needful constituents be supplied except nitrogenous 
 salts, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to manu- 
 facture protoplasm. 
 
 " Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we 
 have no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in 
 consequence of that continual death which is the condi- 
 tion of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, 
 and nitrogenous compounds, which certainly possess no 
 properties but those of ordinary matter. And out of 
 these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which 
 are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the proto- 
 plasm which keeps the animal world agoing. Plants are 
 the accumulators of the power which animals distribute 
 and disperse. ' ' * 
 
 8. Contrast with the definitions given under 2, defini- 
 tions of the same terms given by various dictionaries. 
 
 Write a brief expository essay, defining one of the fol- 
 lowing subjects. 
 
 (i) A college degree. 
 
 (2) A school diploma. 
 
 (3) Good breeding. 
 
 * Huxley. The rest of the paper is an argument based 
 upon the exposition. 
 
2 54 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 (4) Taste. 
 
 (5) Truthfulness. 
 
 (6) Charitable judgment. 
 
 (7) Selfishness. 
 
 (8) Class loyalty. 
 
 (9) Exercise. 
 
 (10) Play. 
 
 (11) Work. 
 
 (12) Fun. 
 
 (13) Duty. 
 
 (14) "Stunt." 
 
 (15) "Dig." 
 
 (16) Slang. 
 
 After you have written the essay, sum up its result in 
 a concise defining phrase. Write this on a separate paper 
 which you retain, and exchange themes, each student then 
 writing also a phrase which seems to sum up in a short 
 definition the paper he has received. The two definitions 
 may then be read in class and compared with the longer 
 exposition, which may be rewritten or partly altered in 
 the light of these results. 
 
 9. Write two short definitions for each of several sub- 
 jects chosen, the first conventional, "dictionary-like," 
 and the second searching, original, setting forth the real 
 nature of the thing. Choose any of the subjects under 
 8, or some of the following: 
 
 ( 1 ) Prosperity. 
 
 (2) Religion. 
 
 (3) A blunder. 
 
 (4) A student. 
 
 (5) A kitten. 
 
 (6) Childhood. 
 
 (7) Conventionality. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 255 
 
 (8) A fairy-story. 
 
 (9) Gossip. 
 
 (10) A lie. 
 
 (11) A picnic. 
 
 ID. Expand one of these definitions into a brief essay; 
 or let two students, one being the author of the definition, 
 expand it and compare their results. * 
 
 LESSON XIX. 
 
 How does the emphasis on discrimination, in the fol- 
 lowing cases, help to define the subjects ? 
 
 I. " Wit was originally a general name for all the in- 
 tellectual powers, meaning the faculty which kens, per- 
 ceives, knows, understands; it was gradually narrowed in 
 its significance to express merely the resemblance between 
 ideas; and lastly to note that resemblance when it occa- 
 sioned ludicrous surprise. It marries ideas, lying wide 
 apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. Humor 
 originally meant moisture, a signification it metaphorically 
 retains, for it is the very juice of the mind, oozing from 
 the brain, and enriching and fertilizing wherever it falls. 
 Wit exists by antipathy; Humor by sympathy. Wit 
 laughs ai things; Humor laughs wil/i them. Wit lashes 
 external appearances, or cunningly exaggerates single 
 foibles into character; Humor glides into the heart of its 
 object, looks lovingly on the infirmities it detects, and 
 represents the whole man. Wit is abrupt, darting, 
 
 * There will be two things to consider here: first, the in- 
 terpretation; second, the means used for its elaborate ex- 
 pression. 
 
2S6 -4 COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 scornful, and tosses its analogies in your face; Humor is 
 slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart. Wit is 
 negative, analytical, destructive; Humor is creative. 
 The couplets of Pope are witty, but Sancho Panza is a 
 humorous creation. Wit, when earnest, has the earnest- 
 ness of passion, seeking to destroy; Humor has the 
 earnestness of affection, and would lift up what is seem- 
 ingly low into our charity and love. Wit, bright, rapid, 
 and blasting as the lightning, flashes, strikes, and 
 vanishes, in an instant; Humor, warm and all-embracing 
 as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding 
 light. Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and 
 crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, 
 uses the whip of scorpions, and the branding-iron, stabs, 
 stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, under- 
 mines; Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, 
 the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and 
 shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, 
 softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, 
 promoting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces 
 which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from 
 the humble. Old Dr. Fuller's remark, that a negro is 
 ' the image of God cut in ebony,' is humorous; Horace 
 Smith's inversion of it, that the task-master is ' the image 
 of the devil cut in ivory,' is witty. Wit can co-exist with 
 fierce and malignant passions; but Humor demands good 
 feeling and fellow-feeling, feeling not merely for what is 
 above us, but for what is around and beneath us. When 
 Wit and Humor are commingled, the result is a genial 
 sharpness, dealing with its objects somewhat as old Izaak 
 Walton dealt with the frog he used for bait, — running 
 the hook neatly through his mouth and out at his gills, 
 and in so doing ' using him as though he loved him! ' 
 
^ 
 
 DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 257 
 
 Sidney Smith and Shakespeare's Touchstone are ex- 
 amples." * 
 
 Segregate all the phrases concerning humor and all 
 concerning wit, and compare the separate effect of the 
 two groups with that of the original passage. What is 
 the reason for the difference .? Is it based on the manner 
 in which we originally discovered the nature of wit and 
 humor ? Explain. 
 
 2. By what means does Mr. Everett in the following 
 passage enforce his distinction between the understanding 
 and the imagination ? Compare the means used in this pas- 
 sage with those in the preceding passage. Would it be pos- 
 sible to treat Mr. Everett's subject in Whipple's manner? 
 
 ' ' We are now ready to compare the imagination with 
 that faculty of the mind which is most distinctly opposed 
 to it. This antithetical faculty is the understanding. 
 The understanding represents the mind in its analytical 
 activity, as the imagination represents it in its construc- 
 tive activity. Practically, analysis is for the most part 
 connected to a greater or less degree with synthesis. We 
 can, however, abstract it from all connection of the sort, 
 and consider it purely in itself. The understanding then 
 gives us the details of prose; the imagination gives us the 
 fullness and unity of poetry. The understanding thus 
 claims to give us the actual ; the imagination gives us the 
 ideal. The understanding, tearing the world apart, 
 analyzing it into its ultimate particles, gives us the poor 
 fragments that remain as its equivalent ; the imagination 
 rests content with nothing less than the rounded beauty 
 of the whole, "t 
 
 3. " For all books are divisible into two classes, the 
 
 * Whipple: Literature and Life ; Wit and Humor. 
 f C. C. Everett: Poetry, Comedy, and Duty, p. 25. 
 
25S A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 books of Ihe hour, and the books of all time. Mark this 
 distinction — it is not one of quality only. It is not 
 merely the bad book that does not last, and the good one 
 that does. It is a distinction of species. There are good 
 books for the hour, and good ones for all time; bad 
 books for the hour, and bad ones for all time. I must 
 define the two kinds before I go farther. 
 
 " The good book of the hour, then, — I do not speak 
 of the bad ones — is simply the useful or pleasant talk of 
 some persons whom you cannot otherwise converse with, 
 printed for you. .Very useful often, telling you what you 
 need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's 
 present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels; 
 good-humored and witty discussions of question; lively 
 or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm fact- 
 telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of 
 passing history; — all these books of the hour, multiplying 
 among us as education becomes more general, are a 
 peculiar characteristic and possession of the present age; 
 we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely 
 ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. 
 But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to 
 usurp the place of true books: for, strictly speaking, they 
 are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in 
 good print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or 
 necessary, to-day : whether worth keeping or not, is to be 
 considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper at 
 breakfast time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day. 
 So, though bound up in a volume, the long letter which 
 gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, 
 and weather last year at such a place, or which tells you 
 that amusing story, or gives you the real circumstances 
 of such and suc.h events, however valuable for occasional 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 259 
 
 reference, may not be, in the real sense of the word, a 
 ' book ' at all, nor, in the real sense, to be ' read. ' A 
 book is essentially not a talked thing, but a written thing; 
 and written, not with the view of mere communication, 
 but of permanence. The book of talk is printed only 
 because its author cannot speak to thousands of people 
 at once; — if he could, he would — the volume is mere 
 muUiplicaiion of his voice. You cannot talk to your 
 friend in India; if you could, you would; you write 
 instead; that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book is 
 written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it 
 merely, but to perpetuate it. The author has something to 
 say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully 
 beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it ; so 
 far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to 
 say it, clearly and melodiously, if he may; clearly, at all 
 events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the 
 thing, or group of things, manifest to him; — this, the 
 piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sun- 
 shine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would 
 fain set it down forever; engrave it on rock, if he could; 
 saying, ' This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and 
 drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another ; my life 
 was as the vapor, and is not; but this I saw and knew; 
 this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.' That 
 is his ' writing ' ; it is, in his small human way, and with 
 whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscrip- 
 tion, or scripture. That is a 'Book.' " * 
 
 (i) From this passage write a definition of "book," 
 as Ruskin understands it. 
 
 * Ruskin: Sesame and Li Hts ; Of Kings' Treasuries. 
 
2 6o A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 (2) Define, by discriminating, the good and the bad 
 books of the hour.* 
 
 4. In the following passage De Quincey tries to tell 
 what literature is, by telling how it affects us. Note that 
 he first divides his subject and then supports his division 
 by his discrimination. 
 
 " Here, however, to prevent all mistakes, let me estab- 
 lish one necessary distinction. The word literature is a 
 perpetual source of confusion, because it is used in two 
 senses, and those senses liable to be confounded with each 
 other. In a philosophical use of the word. Literature is 
 the direct and adequate antithesis of Books of Knowledge. 
 But, in a popular use, it is a mere term of convenience 
 for expressing inclusively the total Books of a language. 
 In this latter sense, a dictionary, a grammar, a spelling- 
 book, an almanac, a pharmacopoeia, a Parliamentary 
 report, a system of farriery, a treatise on billiards, the 
 Court Calendar, etc., belong to the literature. But in 
 the philosophical sense, not only would it be ludicrous 
 to reckon these as parts of the literature, but even books 
 of much higher pretensions must be excluded — as, for 
 instance, books of voyages and travels, and generally all 
 books in which the matter to be communicated is para- 
 mount to the manner or form of its communication 
 (' ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri '). It is difficult 
 to construct the idea of ' literature ' with severe accuracy, 
 for it is a fine art — the supreme fine art, and liable to the 
 difficulties which attend such a subtle notion ; in fact, a 
 severe construction of the idea must be the result of a 
 
 * Note that this may be done by various means: by an ac- 
 count of their effect upon us, or of the characteristic manner 
 and method of each book, or of the character and purpose of 
 their respective authors, etc. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 261 
 
 philosophical investigation into this subject, and cannot 
 precede it. But for the sake of obtaining some expres- 
 sion for literature that may answer our present purpose, 
 let us throw the question into another form. I have said 
 the antithesis of Literature is Books of Knowledge. 
 Now, what is that antithesis to knowledge which is here 
 implicitly latent in the word literature ? The vulgar 
 antithesis is pleasure: (' aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare 
 poetae '). Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to 
 amuse. Indeed ! However, not to spend any words upon 
 it, I suppose you will admit that this wretched antithesis 
 will be of no service to us. And, by the way, let me 
 remark to you, in this as in other cases, how men by 
 their own errors of understanding, by feeble thinking and 
 inadequate distinctions, forge chains of meanness and 
 servility for themselves. For this miserable alternative 
 being once admitted, observe what follows. In which 
 class of books does the Paradise Lost stand ? Among 
 those which instruct, or those which amuse? Now, if a 
 man answers, among those which instruct, he lies; for 
 there is no instruction in it, nor could be in any great 
 poem, according to the meaning which the word must 
 bear in this distinction, unless it is meant that it should 
 invoke its own antithesis. But if he says, ' No, amongst 
 those which amuse,' then what a beast must he be to 
 degrade, and in this way, what has done the most of any 
 human work to raise and dignify human nature! But the 
 truth is, you see, that the idiot does not wish to degrade 
 it; on the contrary, he would willingly tell a lie in its 
 favor, if that would be admitted; but such is the miser- 
 able state of slavery to which he has reduced himself by 
 his own puny distinction ; for as soon as he hops out of 
 one of his little cells, he is under a necessity of hopping 
 
262 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 into the other. The true antithesis to knowledge, in this 
 case, is not pleasure, but power. All that is literature, 
 seeks to communicate power; all that is not literature, 
 to communicate knowledge. Now, if it be asked what is 
 meant by communicating power, I, in my turn, would 
 ask by what name a man would designate the case in 
 which I should be made to feel vividly, and with a vital 
 consciousness, emotions, which ordinary life rarely or 
 never supplies occasions for exciting, and which had pre- 
 viously lain unwakened, and hardly within the dawn of 
 consciousness — as myriads of modes of feeling are at this 
 moment in every human mind for want of a poet to 
 organize them. I say when these inert and sleeping 
 forms are organized, when these possibilities are actual- 
 ized, is this conscious and living possession of mine 
 power, or what is it ? 
 
 ' ' When, in King Lear, the height, and depth, and 
 breadth of human passion is revealed to us, and, for the 
 purposes of a sublime antagonism, is revealed in the weak- 
 ness of an old man's nature, and in one night two worlds 
 of storm are brought face to face — the human world and 
 the world of physical nature — mirrors of each other, semi- 
 choral antiphonies, strophe and antistrophe heaving with 
 rival convulsions, and with the double darkness of night 
 and madness, — when I am thus suddenly startled into a 
 feeling of the infinity of the world within me, is this 
 power, or what may I call it .? Space, again, what is it 
 in most men's minds ? The lifeless form of the world 
 without us, a postulate of the geometrician, with no more 
 vitality or real existence to their feelings than the square 
 root of two. But if Milton has been able to inform this 
 empty theater, peopling it with Titanic shadows, forms 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 263 
 
 that sat at the eldest counsels of the infant world, chaos 
 and original night, — 
 
 ' Ghostly shapes. 
 To meet at noontide, Fear and trembling Hope, 
 
 Death the Skeleton, 
 And Time the Shadow,' — 
 
 SO that, from being a thing to inscribe with diagrams, it 
 has become under his hands a vital agent on the human 
 mind, — I presume that I may justly express the tendency 
 of the Paradise Lost by saying that it communicates 
 power; a pretension far above all communication of 
 knowledge. Henceforth, therefore, I shall use the an- 
 tithesis power and knowledge as the most philosophical 
 expression for literature (that is Literse Humaniores) and 
 anti-literature (that is, Literae didacticse — naideia)." * 
 
 5. (i) Show, by defining them, that this antithesis 
 
 between the terms "knowledge" and 
 " power " can be resolved, the difference be- 
 tween them being one of degree, not of kind. 
 (2) Keeping the same line of thought, define "ex- 
 position," so as to make it include both of 
 De Quincey's classes. 
 
 6. From the following estimate of Lowell, construct 
 an antithetic definition of "latent" and "patent" 
 patriotism. 
 
 " If there be two kinds of patriotism, the latent and 
 the patent, his kind was essentially the latter. Some 
 people for whom the world is various and universal, and 
 who dread nothing so much as seeing it cornered, regard 
 this particular sentiment as a purely practical one, a pre- 
 scription of duty in a given case, like a knack with the 
 
 * De Quincey: Letters to a Young Man, 11[. 
 
264 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY fVRITING. 
 
 coiled hose when the house is on fire, or the plunge of 
 the swimmer when a man is overboard. They grudge it 
 a place in the foreground of the spirit — they consider that 
 it shuts out the view. Others find it constantly comfort- 
 able and perpetually fresh — find, as it were, the case 
 always given; for them the immediate view is the view 
 and the very atmosphere of the mind, so that it is not a 
 question only of performance, but of contemplation as 
 well. Mr. Lowell's horizon was too wide to be curtained 
 out, and his intellectual curiosity such as to have effec- 
 tually prevented his shutting himself up in his birth 
 chamber; but if the local idea never kept his intelligence 
 at home, he solved the difficulty by at least never going 
 forth without it. When he quitted the hearth it was with 
 the household god in his hand, and as he delighted in 
 Europe it was to Europe he took it. Never had a house- 
 hold god such a magnificent outing, nor was made free of 
 so many strange rites and climes; never, in short, had 
 any patriotisiii such a liberal airing. If, however, Mr. 
 Lowell was loath to admit that the American order could 
 have an infirmity, I think it was because it would have 
 cost him so much to acknowledge that it could have 
 communicated one to an object that he cherished as he 
 cherished the English tongue. TAai was the innermost 
 atmosphere of his mind, and he never could have afforded, 
 on this general question, any policy but a policy of 
 annexation. He was capable of convictions in the light 
 of which it was clear that the language he wrote so 
 admirably had encountered in the United States not cor- 
 ruption, but conservation. Any conviction of his on this 
 subject was a contribution to science, and he was zealous 
 to show that the speech of New England was most largely 
 that of an older and more vernacular England than the 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 265 
 
 England that to-day finds it queer. He was capable of 
 writing perfect American to bring out this archaic element. 
 He kept in general the two tongues apart, save in so far 
 as his English style betrayed a connection by a certain 
 American tact in the art of leaving out. He was perhaps 
 sometimes slightly paradoxical in the contention that the 
 language had incurred no peril in its western adventures; 
 this is the sense in which I meant just now that he occa- 
 sionally crossed the line. The difficulty was not that his 
 vision of pure English could not fail in America sometimes 
 to be clouded — the peril was for his vision of pure 
 American. His standard was the highest, and the wish 
 was often, no doubt, father to the thought. The Biglow 
 Papers are delightful, but nothing could be less like The 
 Biglow Papers than the style of the American newspaper. 
 He lent his wit to his theories, but one or two of them 
 lived on him like unthrifty sons. " * 
 ,o> ?• " Nature, natural, and the group of words derived 
 from them, or allied to them in etymology, have at all 
 times filled a great place in the thoughts and taken a 
 strong hold on the feelings of mankind. That they 
 should have done so is not surprising, when we consider 
 what the words, in their primitive and most obvious sig- 
 nification, represent; but it is unfortunate that a set of 
 terms which play so great a part in moral and metaphys- 
 ical speculation, should have acquired many meanings 
 different from the primary one, yet sufficiently allied to it 
 to admit of confusion. The words have thus become 
 entangled in so many foreign associations, mostly of a 
 very powerful and tenacious character, that they have 
 come to excite, and to be the symbols of, feelings which 
 
 * Henry James: Atlantic Monthly, 69 -.ifi. 
 
266 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 their original meaning will by no means justify ; and which 
 have made them one of the most copious sources of false 
 taste, false philosophy, false morality, and even bad law. 
 
 "The most important application of the Socratic 
 Elenchus, as exhibited and improved by Plato, consists 
 in dissecting large abstractions of this description ; fixing 
 down to a precise definition the meaning which as popu- 
 larly used they merely shadowed forth, and questioning 
 and testing the common maxims and opinions in which 
 they bear a part. It is to be regretted that among the 
 instructive specimens of this kind of investigation which 
 Plato has left, and to which subsequent times have been 
 so much indebted for whatever intellectual clearness they 
 have attained, he has not enriched posterity with a 
 dialogue nepi (pvcreoos. If the idea denoted by the word 
 had been subjected to his searching analysis, and the 
 popular commonplaces in which it figures had been sub- 
 mitted to the ordeal of his powerful dialectics, his suc- 
 cessors probably would not have rushed, as they speedily 
 did, into modes of thinking and reasoning of which the 
 fallacious use of that word formed the corner-stone; a 
 kind of fallacy from which he was himself singularly free. 
 
 " According to the Platonic method which is still the 
 best type of such investigations, the first thing to be done 
 with so vague a term is to ascertain precisely what it 
 means. It is also a rule of the same method, that the 
 meaning of an abstraction is best sought for in the con- 
 crete — of a universal in the particular. Adopting this 
 course with the word Nature, the first question must be, 
 What is meant by the " nature ' of a particular object ? as 
 of fire, of water, or of some individual plant or animal ? 
 Evidently the ensemi/e or aggregate of its powers or 
 properties: the modes in which it acts on other things 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 267 
 
 (counting among those things the senses of the observer) 
 and the modes in which other things act upon it; to 
 which, in the case of a sentient being, must be added, its 
 own capacities of feeling, or being conscious. The 
 Nature of the thing means al! this; means its entire 
 capacity of exhibiting phenomena. And since the 
 phenomena which a thing exhibits, however much they 
 vary in different circumstances, are always the same in 
 the same circumstances, they admit of being described in 
 general forms of words, which are called the laws of the 
 thing's nature. Thus it is a law of the nature of water 
 that under the mean pressure of the atmosphere at the 
 level of the sea, it boils at 212° Fahrenheit. 
 
 " As the nature of any given thing is the aggregate of 
 its power and properties, so Nature in the abstract is the 
 aggregate of the powers and properties of all things. 
 Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with 
 the causes which produce them;_ including not only all 
 that happens, but all that is capable of happening; the 
 unused capabilities of causes being as much a part of the 
 idea of Nature as those which take effect. Since all 
 phenomena .which have been sufficiently examined are 
 found to take place with regularity, each having certain 
 fixed conditions, positive and negative, on the occurrence 
 of which it invariably happens, mankind have been able 
 to ascertain, either by direct observation or by reasoning 
 processes grounded on it, the conditions of the occurrence 
 of many phenomena; and the progress of science mainly 
 consists in ascertaining those conditions. When dis- 
 covered they can be expressed in general propositions, 
 which are called laws of the particular phenomenon, and 
 also, more generally, Laws of Nature. Thus the truth 
 that all material objects tend towards one another with a 
 
268 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY MERITING. 
 
 force directly as their masses and inversely as the square 
 of their distance, is a law of Nature. The proposition 
 that air and food are necessary to animal life, if it be as 
 we have good reason to believe, true without exception, 
 is also a law of Nature, though the phenomenon of which 
 it is the law is special, and not, like gravitation, universal. 
 
 " Nature, then, in this its simplest acceptation, is a col- 
 lective name for all facts, actual and possible; or (to 
 speak more accurately) a name for the mode, partly 
 known to us and partly unknown, in which all things 
 take place. For the word suggests, not so much the mul- 
 titudinous detail of the phenomena, as the conception 
 which might be formed of their manner of existence as a 
 mental whole, by a mind possessing a complete knowl- 
 edge of them : to which conception it is the aim of science 
 to raise itself, by successive steps of generalization from 
 experience. 
 
 " Such, then, is a correct definition of the word Nature. 
 But this definition corresponds only to one of the senses 
 of that ambiguous term. It is evidently inapplicable to 
 some of the modes in which the word is familiarly em- 
 ployed. For example, it entirely conflicts with the 
 common form of speech by which Nature is opposed to 
 Art, and natural to artificial. For in the sense of the 
 word Nature which has just been defined, and which is 
 the true scientific sense. Art is as much Nature as any- 
 thing else; and everything which is artificial is natural — 
 Art has no independent powers of its own : Art is but the 
 employment of the powers of Nature for an end. Phe- 
 nomena produced by human agency, no less than those 
 which as far as we are concerned are spontaneous, depend 
 on the properties of the elementary forces, or of the ele- 
 mentary substances and their compounds. The united 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 269 
 
 powers of the whole human race could not create a new 
 property of matter in general, or of any one of its species. 
 We can only take advantage, for our purposes, of the 
 properties which we find. A ship floats by the same laws 
 of specific gravity and equilibrium, as a tree uprooted by 
 the wind and blown into the water. The corn which 
 men raise for food grows and produces its grain by the 
 same laws of vegetation by which the wild rose and the 
 mountain strawberry bring forth their flowers and fruit. 
 A house stands and holds together by the natural proper- 
 ties, the weight and cohesion of the materials which com- 
 pose it : a steam-engine works by the natural expansive 
 force of steam, exerting a pressure upon one part of a 
 system of arrangements, which pressure, by the mechan- 
 ical properties of the lever, is transferred from that to 
 another part, where it raises the weight or removes the 
 obstacle brought into connection with it. In these and 
 all other artificial operations the office of man is, as has 
 often been remarked, a very limited one; it consists in 
 moving things into certain places. We move objects, and 
 by doing this, bring some things into contact which were 
 separate, or separate others which were in contact; and 
 by this simple change of place, natural forces previously 
 dormant are called into action, and produce the desired 
 effect. Even the volition which designs, the intelligence 
 which contrives, and the muscular force which executes 
 these movements, are themselves powers of Nature. 
 
 " It thus appears that we must recognize at least two 
 principal meanings in the word Nature. In one sense, it 
 means all the powers existing in either the outer or the 
 inner world, and everything which takes place by means 
 of those powers. In another sense, it means, not every- 
 thing which happens, but only what takes place without 
 
2 70 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 the agency, or without the voluntary and intentional 
 agency, oi man. This distinction is far from exhausting 
 the ambiguities of the word ; but it is the key to most of 
 those on which important consequences depend." * 
 
 Reduce to a single sentence the antithesis by which the 
 definition of nature is brought out. 
 
 8. Interpret in a manner consonant with Mill's defini- 
 tion, the following passage, so that a child of high-school 
 age could understand its meaning. 
 
 Perdita. Sir, . . . the fairest flowers o' the season 
 Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors, 
 . . . and I care not 
 To get slips of them, 
 
 Polixenes. Wherefore, gentle maiden, 
 
 Do you neglect them ? 
 
 Per. For I have heard it said 
 
 There is an art which in their piedness shares 
 With great creating nature. 
 
 Pol. Say there be; 
 
 Yet nature is made better by no mean 
 But nature makes that mean; so, over that art 
 Which you say adds to nature, is an art 
 That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 
 A gentler scion to the wildest stock, 
 And make conceive a bark of baser kind 
 By bud of nobler race: this is an art 
 Which does mend nature, change it rather, but 
 The art itself is nature. 
 
 Per. So it is. 
 
 Pol. Then make your gardens rich in gillyvors. 
 
 Per. I'll not put 
 
 The dibble in earth to set one slip of them; 
 No more than were I painted I would wish 
 This youth should say 'twere well.f 
 
 * John Stuart Mill: Three Essays on Religion ; Nature. 
 ■f Shakespeare; The Winter's Tale, Act 2, Scene 3. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION- 271 
 
 9. Write one or two paragraphs defining, by the method 
 of discrimination, the nature of contrasted objects. 
 
 (i) Stories for children and stories about children. 
 
 (2) Real poetry and sham poetry. 
 
 (3) Games of skill and games of chance. 
 
 (4) Formal and informal calls. 
 
 (5) The enjoyment of Saturday and of Sunday. 
 
 (6) The enjoyment of the slow waltz and of the two- 
 
 step. 
 
 (7) The pleasures of early rising and of sleeping late. 
 
 (8) The girl and the young lady. 
 
 ID. Discriminate, by a clean-cut and searching antithe- 
 sis, some of the following: 
 
 (i) Comfort and luxury. 
 
 (2) Work and exercise. 
 
 (3) Play and recreation ; or play and rest. 
 
 (4) Fun and sport. 
 
 (5) Pleasure and joy. 
 
 (6) Conversation and talking. 
 
 (7) Truth and fact 
 
 (8) Culture and polish. 
 
 (9) Pity and sympathy. 
 
 (10) Scorn and contempt. 
 
 (11) Genius and talent. 
 
 (12) Sentiment and sentimentality. 
 
 (13) Wisdom and knowledge. 
 
 (14) Novel and romance. 
 
 (15) Unselfishness and good-nature. 
 
 (16) News and gossip. 
 
 II. What division of the subject is expressed or im- 
 plied, and how does it help to define the subject, in the 
 passages previously cited ? e.g. : 
 
 (i) Newman, on the great author, p. 191-193. 
 
272 
 
 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 (2) Walter Besant, on the young lady of 1837, 
 
 pp. 195-203. (The division here has to do 
 •with the various phases of her life). 
 
 (3) Newman, on universities, pp. 220-231. 
 
 (4) Whipple, on wit and humor, pp. 255-257. 
 
 (5) Ruskin, on books, pp. 257-259. 
 
 (6) De Quincey, on literature, pp. 260-263. 
 (Note that in all definition by antithesis, the discrimi- 
 nation involves division.) 
 
 12. Divide, in a number of different ways, one of the 
 following subjects, preparatory to treating it in an exposi- 
 tory essay. Try to make your division searching and 
 fundamental, so that in itself it shall convey much sugges- 
 tion as to the true nature of the subject treated. 
 
 (0 
 
 Colleges; or, schools. 
 
 (2) 
 
 Poetry. 
 
 (3) 
 
 Law. 
 
 (4) 
 
 Science. 
 
 (5) 
 
 Games. 
 
 (6) 
 
 Work. 
 
 (7) 
 
 Recreation. 
 
 (8) 
 
 Reading. 
 
 (9) 
 
 Afternoon teas. 
 
 (10) 
 
 Lectures. 
 
 (11) 
 
 Athletics. 
 
 (12) 
 
 Magazine literature. 
 
 (13) 
 
 Novels. 
 
 (14) 
 
 Text-books. 
 
 13. Write, as if for an educational journal, a criticism 
 
 of the table of contents of any text-book, e.g., a Latin 
 
 Grammar 
 
 , Hygiene, Rhetoric, History, etc. 
 
 14. Prepare the plan, including the title-page, the 
 
 preface. 
 
 and the table of contents, for a text-book of 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 2 73 
 
 rhetoric or composition, adapted for use with children of 
 ten or under. Specify the grade for which it is written. 
 In the preface briefly defend, as if in anticipation of criti- 
 cism, the system of division embodied in your table of 
 contents. 
 
 LESSON XX. 
 
 Make a careful study of Mr. John Fiske's TTte Meaning 
 of Infancy,* as a further instance of expository writing by 
 definition. It will repay about a week of study, which 
 should keep in mind rather the general management of 
 the subject, the main lines of the thought, and the choice 
 of illustrations, than the smaller details of its presenta- 
 tion. 
 
 1. How is infancy classified ? What else is included 
 in the larger class to which it is assigned 1 
 
 2. How does the essay make clear the meaning of this 
 classification ? 
 
 3. Condense each paragraph of the essay into a short 
 sentence or clause, writmg these consecutively so that 
 they shall constitute an abstract of the essay. 
 
 4. Examine carefully the exact impression made upon 
 you by each of the concrete illustrations, and determine 
 in this way its value to the essay. Ask yourselves such 
 questions as these: Why does he begin with the piano- 
 playing, instead of with the Mecanique Celeste P What is 
 gained by the mention of Rubinstein ? Why would it 
 not be better to begin with the codfish and work up to 
 Rubinstein and Laplace .? In selecting the animals he 
 will mention, how he has been guided by (i) the require- 
 
 * The essay has been reprinted in cheap form oy Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co. 
 
2 74 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 ments of his thought; (2) the character of his audience 
 (presumably the rank and file of the reading classes). 
 
 5. What use is made of " generalized narration " in the 
 essay ? Why did the purpose of the essay require this 
 method rather than that of generalized description ? 
 
 6. Show, either by the method of generalized narration, 
 or by the use of concrete instances, or by both means: 
 
 (i) The value (or the dangerous character) of habit. 
 
 (2) The meaning of instinct. 
 
 (3) The true meaning of " the newspaper habit," or 
 
 the habit of reading nothing but magazines or 
 novels, or funny papers. 
 
 (4) College education; its meaning as a further pro- 
 
 longation of infancy. 
 
 (5) Natural selection; what it really is. (Explain 
 
 as to a younger boy or girl. ) 
 
 7. Study your own paragraph structure in these papers, 
 side by side with that of Mr. Fiske's essay.* 
 
 ^ The Meaning of Infancy. "[■ 
 
 "What is the Meaning of Infancy? What is the 
 meaning of the fact that man is born into the world more 
 helpless than any other creature, and needs for a much 
 longer season than any other living thing the tender care 
 
 * For further class discussion of the separate paragraphs, it 
 is helpful to assign to each student a single paragraph in the 
 essay, making him responsible for a complete exposition of it 
 to the class. 
 
 f A very brief restatement, in simple language, of the main 
 points of the theory of man's origin first suggested in my lec- 
 tures at Harvard University in 1871, and worked out in Outlines 
 of Cosmic Philosophy, Part II, Chaps. XVI, XXI, and XXII. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 275 
 
 and wise counsel of his elders ? It is one of the most 
 familiar of facts that man, alone among animals, exhibits 
 a capacity for progress. That man is widely different 
 from other animals in the length of his adolescence and 
 the utter helplessness of his babyhood, is an equally 
 familiar fact. Now between these two commonplace facts 
 is there any connection ? Is it a mere accident that the 
 creature which is distinguished as progressive should also 
 be distinguished as coming slowly to maturity, or is there 
 a reason lying deep down in the nature of things why this 
 should be so ? I think it can be shown, with very few 
 words, that between these two facts there is a connection 
 that is deeply inwrought with the processes by which life 
 has been evolved upon the earth. It can be shown that 
 man's progressiveness and the length of his infancy are 
 but two sides of one and the same fact; and in showing 
 this, still more will appear. It will appear that it was 
 the lengthening of infancy which ages ago gradually con- 
 verted our forefathers from brute creatures into human 
 creatures. It is babyhood that has made man what he 
 is. The simple unaided operation of natural selection 
 could never have resulted in the origination of the human 
 race. Natural selection might have gone on forever im- 
 proving the breed of the highest animal in many ways, 
 but it could never unaided have started the process of 
 civilization or have given to man those peculiar attributes 
 in virtue of which it has been well said that the difference 
 between him and the highest of apes immeasurably tran- 
 scends in value the difference between an ape and a blade 
 of grass. In order to bring about that wonderful event, 
 the Creation of Man, natural selection had to call in the 
 aid of other agencies, and the chief of these agencies was 
 the gradual lengthening of babyhood. 
 
276 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY fVRlTlNG. 
 
 ' ' Such is the point which I wish to illustrate in few 
 words, and to indicate some of its bearings on the history 
 of human progress. Let us first observe what it was that 
 lengthened the infancy of the highest animal, for then we 
 shall be the better able to understand the character of the 
 prodigious effects which this infancy has wrought. A 
 few familiar facts concerning the method in which men 
 learn how to do things will help us here. 
 
 " When we begin to learn to play the piano, we have 
 to devote much time and thought to the adjustment and 
 movement of our fingers and to the interpretation of the 
 vast and complicated multitude of symbols which make 
 up the printed page of music that stands before us. For 
 a long time, therefore, our attempts are feeble and stam- 
 mering and they require the full concentrated power of 
 the mind. Yet a trained pianist will play a new piece of 
 music at sight, and perhaps have so much attention to 
 spare that he can talk with you at the same time. What 
 an enormous number of mental acquisitions have in this 
 case become almost instinctive or automatic! It is just 
 so in learning a foreign language, and it was just the 
 same when in childhood we learned to walk, to talk, and 
 to write. It is just the same, too, in learning to think 
 about abstruse subjects. What at first strains the atten- 
 tion to the utmost, and often wearies us, comes at last to 
 be done without effort and almost unconsciously. Great 
 minds thus travel over vast fields of thought with an ease 
 of which they are themselves unaware. Dr. Nathaniel 
 Bowditch once said that in translating the Micanique 
 Celeste he had come upon formulas which Laplace intro- 
 duced with the word ' obviously, ' where it took, neverthe- 
 less, many days of hard study to supply the intermediate 
 steps through which that transcendent mind had passed 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 277 
 
 with one huge leap of inference. At some time in his 
 youth no doubt Laplace had to think of these things, just 
 as Rubinstein had once to think how his fingers should 
 be placed on the keys of the piano; but what was once 
 the object of conscious attention comes at last to be 
 well-nigh automatic, while the flight of the conscious 
 mind goes on ever to higher and vaster themes. 
 
 " Let us now take a long leap from the highest level of 
 human intelligence to the mental life of a turtle or a cod- 
 fish. In what does the mental life of such creatures 
 consist ? It consists of a few simple acts mostly concerned 
 with the securing of food and the avoiding of danger, and 
 these few simple acts are repeated with unvarying monot- 
 ony during the whole lifetime of these creatures. Conse- 
 quently these acts are performed with great ease and are 
 attended with very little consciousness, and moreover the 
 capacity to perform them is transmitted from parent to 
 offspring as completely as the capacity of the stomach to 
 digest food is transmitted. In all animals the new-born 
 stomach needs but the contact with food in order to 
 begin digesting, and the new-born lungs need but the 
 contact with air in order to begin to breathe. The 
 capacity for performing these perpetually-repeated visceral 
 actions is transmitted in perfection. All the requisite 
 nervous connections are fully established during the brief 
 embryonic existence of each creature. In the case of 
 lower animals it is almost as much so with the few simple 
 actions which make up the creature's mental life. The 
 bird known as the fly-catcher no sooner breaks the egg 
 than it will snap at and catch a Ry. This action is not 
 so very simple, but because it is something the bird is 
 always doing, being indeed one out of the very few things 
 that this bird ever does, the nervous connections needful 
 
278 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING 
 
 for doing it are all established before birth, and nothing 
 but the presence of the fly is required to set the operation 
 going. 
 
 With such creatures as the codfish, the turtle, or the 
 fly-catcher, there is accordingly nothing that can properly 
 be called, infancy. With them the sphere of education 
 is extremely limited. They get their education before 
 they are born. In other words, heredity does everything 
 for them, education nothing. The career of the indi- 
 vidual is predetermined by the careers of his ancestors, 
 and he can do almost nothing to vary it. The life of such 
 creatures is conservatism cut and dried, and there is noth- 
 ing progressive about them. 
 
 " In what I just said I left an ' almost.' There is a 
 great deal of saving virtue in that little adverb. Doubt- 
 less even animals low in the scale possess some tamt 
 traces of educability; but they are so very slight that it 
 takes geologic ages to produce an appreciable result. In 
 all the innumerable wanderings, fights, upturnings, and 
 cataclysms of the earth's stupendous career, each creature 
 has been summoned under penalty of death to use what 
 little wit he may have had, and the slightest trace of 
 mental flexibility is of such priceless value in the struggle 
 for existence that natural selection must always have 
 seized upon it, and sedulously hoarded and transmitted it 
 for coming generations to strengthen and increase. With 
 the lapse of geologic time the upper grades of animal in- 
 telligence have doubtless been raised higher and higher 
 through natural selection. The warm-blooded mammals 
 and birds of to-day no doubt surpass the cold-blooded 
 dinosaurs of the Jurassic age in mental qualities as they 
 surpass them in physical structure. From the codfish and 
 turtle of ancient family to the modern lion, dog, and 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 279 
 
 monkey, it is a very long step upward. The mental life 
 of a warm-blooded animal is a very different affair from 
 that of reptiles and fishes. A squirrel or a bear does a 
 good many things in the course of his life. He meets 
 various vicissitudes in various ways; he has adventures. 
 The actions he performs are so complex and so numerous 
 that they are severally performed with less frequency than 
 the few actions performed by the codfish. The requisite 
 nervous connections are accordingly not fully established 
 before birth. There is not time enough. The nervous 
 connections needed for the visceral movements and for 
 the few simple instinctive actions get organized, and then 
 the creature is born before he has learned how to do all 
 the things his parents could do. A good many of his 
 nervous connections are not yet formed, they are only 
 formable. Accordingly, he is not quite able to take care 
 of himself; he must for a time be watched and nursed. 
 All mammals and most birds have thus a period of baby- 
 hood that is not very long, but is on the whole longest 
 with the most intelligent creatures. It is especially long 
 with the higher monkeys, and among the man-like apes it 
 becomes so long as to be strikingly suggestive. An infant 
 orang-outang, captured by Mr. Wallace, was still a help- 
 less baby at the age of three months, unable to feed itself, 
 to walk without aid, or to grasp objects with precision. 
 
 " But this period of helplessness has to be viewed 
 under another aspect. It is a period oi plasticity. The 
 creature's career is no longer exclusively determined by 
 heredity. There is a period after birth when its character 
 can be slightly modified by what happens to it after birth, 
 that is, by its experience as an individual. It becomes 
 educable. It is no longer necessary for each generation to 
 be exactly like that which has preceded. A door is 
 
2 So A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 opened through which the capacity for progress can enter. 
 Horses and dogs, bears and elephants, parrots and 
 monkeys, are all teachable to some extent, and we have 
 even heard of a learned pig. Of learned asses there has 
 been no lack in the world. 
 
 " But this educability of the higher mammals and birds 
 is after all quite limited. By the beginnings of infancy 
 the door for progressiveness was set ajar, but it was not all 
 at once thrown wide open. Conservatism still continued 
 in fashion. One generation of cattle is much like 
 another. It would be easy for foxes to learn to climb 
 trees, and many a fox might have saved his life by doing 
 so; yet quick-witted as he is, this obvious device never 
 seems to have occurred to Reynard. Among slightly 
 teachable mammals, however, there is one group more 
 teachable than the rest. Monkeys, with their greater 
 power of handling things, have also more inquisitiveness 
 and more capacity for sustained attention than any other 
 mammals; and the higher apes are fertile in varied 
 resources. The orang-outang and gorilla are for this 
 reason dreaded by other animals, and roam the undis- 
 puted lords of their native forests. They have probably 
 approached the critical point where variations in intelli- 
 gence, always important, have come to be supremely im- 
 portant, so as to be seized by natural selection in prefer- 
 ence to variations in physical constitution. At some 
 remote epoch of the past — we cannot say just when or 
 how — our half-human forefathers reached and passed this 
 critical point, and forthwith their varied struggles began 
 age after age to result in the preservation of bigger and 
 better brains, while the rest of their bodies changed but 
 little. This particular work of natural selection must 
 have gone on for an enormous length of time, and as its 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 281 
 
 result we see that while man remains anatomically much 
 like an ape, he has acquired a vastly greater brain with all 
 that this implies. Zoologically the distance is small 
 between man and the chimpanzee; psychologically it has 
 become so great as to be immeasurable. 
 
 " But this steady increase of intelligence, as our fore- 
 fathers began to become human, carried with it a steady 
 prolongation of infancy. As mental life became more 
 complex and various, as the things to be learned kept ever 
 multiplying, less and less could be done before birth, 
 more and more must be left to be done in the earlier years 
 of life. So instead of being born with a few simple 
 capacities thoroughly organized, man came at last to be 
 born with the germs of many complex capacities which 
 were reserved to be unfolded and enhanced or checked 
 and stifled by the incidents of personal experience in each 
 individual. In this simple yet wonderful way there has 
 been provided for man a long period during which his 
 mind is plastic and malleable, and the length of this 
 period has increased with civilization until it now covers 
 nearly one third of our lives. It is not that our inherited 
 tendencies and aptitudes are not still the main thing. It 
 is only that we have at last acquired great power to 
 modify them by training, so that progress may go on with 
 ever-increasing sureness and rapidity. 
 
 " In thus pointing out the causes of infancy, we have 
 at the same time witnessed some of its effects. One 
 effect, of stupendous importance, remains to be pointed 
 out. As helpless babyhood came more and more to 
 depend on parental care, the correlated feelings were 
 developed on the part of parents, and the fleeting sexual 
 relations established among mammals in general were 
 gradually exchanged for permanent relations. A cow 
 
282 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 feels strong maternal affection for her nursing calf, but 
 after the calf is fully grown, though doubtless she distin- 
 guishes it from other members of the herd, it is not clear 
 that she entertains for it any parental feeling. But with 
 our half-human forefathers it is not difficult to see how 
 infancy extending over several years must have tended 
 gradually to strengthen the relations of the children to the 
 mother, and eventually to both parents, and thus give rise 
 to the permanent organization of the family. When this 
 step was accomplished we may say that the Creation of 
 Man had been achieved. For through the organization 
 of the family has arisen that of the clan or tribe, which 
 has formed, as it were, the cellular tissue out of which the 
 most complex human society has come to be constructed. 
 And out of that subordination of individual desires to the 
 common interest, which first received a definite direction 
 when the family was formed, there grew the rude begin- 
 nings of human morality. 
 
 " It was thus through the lengthening of his infancy 
 that the highest of animals came to be Man, — a creature 
 with definite social relationships and with an element of 
 plasticity in his organization such as has come at last to 
 make his difference from all other animals a difference in 
 kind. Here at last there had come upon the scene a 
 creature endowed with the capacity for progress, and a 
 new chapter was thus opened m the history of creation. 
 But it was not to be expected that man should all at once 
 learn how to take advantage of this capacity. Nature, 
 which is said to make no jumps, surely did not jump 
 here. The whole history of civilization, indeed, is largely 
 the history of man's awkward and stumbling efforts to 
 avail himself of this flexibility of mental constitution with 
 which God has endowed him. For many a weary age the 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 283 
 
 progress men achieved was feeble and halting. Though 
 it had ceased to be physically necessary for each genera- 
 tion to tread exactly in the steps of its predecessor, yet 
 the circumstances of primitive society long made it very 
 difficult for any deviation to be effected. For the tribes 
 of primitive men were perpetually at war with each other, 
 and their methods of tribal discipline were military 
 methods. To allow much freedom of thought would be 
 perilous, and the whole tribe was supposed to be responsi- 
 ble for the words and deeds of each of its members. The 
 tribes most rigorous in this stern discipline were those 
 which killed out tribes more loosely organized, and thus 
 survived to hand down to coming generations their ideas 
 and their methods. From this state of things an intense 
 social conservatism was begotten, — a strong disposition 
 on the part of society to destroy the flexible-minded indi- 
 vidual who dares to think and behave differently from his 
 fellows. During the past three thousand years much has 
 been done to weaken this conservatism by putting an end 
 to the state of things which produced it. As great and 
 strong societies have arisen, as the sphere of warfare has 
 diminished while the sphere of industry has enlarged, the 
 need for absolute conformity has ceased to be felt, while 
 the advantages of freedom and variety come to be ever 
 more clearly apparent. At a late stage of civilization, the 
 flexible or plastic society acquires even a military advan- 
 tage over the society that is more rigid, as in the struggle 
 between French and English civilization for primacy in 
 the world. In our own country, the political birth of 
 which dates from the triumph of England in that mighty 
 struggle, the element of plasticity in man's nature is more 
 thoroughly heeded, more fully taken account of, than in 
 any other community known to history; and herein lies- 
 
284 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 the chief potency of our promise for the future. We have 
 come to the point where we are beginning to see that we 
 may safely depart from unreasoning routine, and, with 
 perfect freedom of thinking in science and in religion, 
 with new methods of education that shall train our 
 children to think for themselves while they interrogate 
 Nature with a courage and an ijisight that shall grow ever 
 bolder and keener, we may ere long be able fully to avail 
 ourselves of the fact that we come into the world as little 
 children with undeveloped powers wherein lie latent all 
 the boundless possibilities of a higher and grander 
 Humanity than has yet been seen upon the earth. ' ' 
 
 LESSON XXI. 
 
 Make a careful study of Arnold's Sweetness and Light.* 
 The essay contains material to occupy two weeks, or 
 possibly three. The student will do well to give much 
 of his attention to the main lines of thought, but there is 
 opportunity — much more than in the preceding essay — 
 for detailed work as well. In determining the relative 
 emphasis, the needs and interests of the class should be 
 considered. 
 
 1. Carry out into completeness a tabular scheme such 
 as is suggested on page 173. 
 
 2. Embody the main thought of the essay in a series 
 of sentences, as was done in Lesson XX, 3. 
 
 3. What is your impression as to the relative preponder- 
 ance in the essay of classification and discrimination ? 
 Verify or correct this impression by re-examination of the 
 
 * This essay is now to be found in a number of cheap edi- 
 tions; it has been reprinted with Pater's Essay on Style, by the 
 Macmillan Company, 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 285 
 
 essay. Embody your final opinion in one or two para- 
 graphs, using the methods of generalized narration and 
 concrete instance. 
 
 4. Carefully examine the paragraph-structure in several 
 cases where it illustrates the development of a thought by 
 repetition in varied form or slightly varied aspect. What 
 is the effect of this method ? What are its merits, what 
 its defects ? 
 
 Notice especially the third paragraph, the fourth, the 
 seventh, the eighth, the first part of the tenth, the 
 eleventh. 
 
 5. From paragraphs i i-i 5 formulate Arnold's idea of 
 "machinery." Represent in tabular form his classifi- 
 cation of the term, and of other terms in relation to it. 
 
 Compare Emerson's use of the same thought in Works 
 and Days. * 
 
 6. Write an essay, using the method of repetition in 
 expounding a theme such as the following : 
 
 (i) What is a college degree (or a school diploma) 
 but machinery ? 
 
 (2) What is our pride in colonial expansion but a 
 
 pride in machinery ? 
 
 (3) What is universal suffrage but machinery ? 
 
 (4) Scholarship that is machinery and scholarship 
 
 that is not. 
 
 7. Study Arnold's use of concrete instances. How are 
 these adapted to his public ? Substitute in their place 
 instances which will appeal more directly to an American 
 audience, or to an audience of your own town, or your 
 own college or school. 
 
 8. Determine roughly the characteristic form of 
 Arnold's sentences by some such method as the follow- 
 
 * Emerson: Society and Solitude^ 
 
2 86 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY WRITING. 
 
 ing: Choose one hundred sentences at random from dif- 
 ferent parts of the essay, and determine in regard to each 
 of them whether it is (a) long or short*; {b) simple, 
 complex, or compound; (c) loose, periodic, or balanced. 
 Make a table of your results. Do you notice any simi- 
 larity between this characteristic form of Arnold's sentence 
 and the way in which the large plan of the essay develops 
 the idea involved .? 
 
 9. Aside from the consideration of mere length, how 
 many kinds of sentences do you find in the essay .? What is 
 the effect of each kind ? What is it good for ? What use is 
 made of the dash 1 With what purpose and what effect ? 
 
 10. On the basis of this study, define a sentence (i) 
 by means of a conventionally phrased definition; (2) by a 
 generalized narrative recounting the process of its forma- 
 tion in the mind of the writer; (3) by a division of sen- 
 tences into their kinds; and (4) by a discrimination of 
 these kinds from one another on a basis of their form, 
 their purpose, their effect, f 
 
 11. Compare Arnold's sentences with Newman's (Cf. 
 pp. 191-193; 220-231). First note your immediate and 
 spontaneous impression as to the difference between them, 
 then correct this impression by a closer survey of New- 
 man's writing. What relation have these two types of sen- 
 tence-structure to the typical methods by which Arnold 
 and Newman attempt to establish a new conception in the 
 mind of another person .? 
 
 * An arbitrary limit of length must of course be set for this 
 purpose, such as, say, twelve or fifteen words. All sentences 
 passing this number may be considered long. 
 
 f In this and the following essay the work on sentences may 
 be guided and the suggestions here given may be supple- 
 mented by the use of Chap. IV of Scott and Denney's Com- 
 position-Rhetoric, 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 287 
 
 12. Expound by whatever method seems best, the 
 meaning of Arnold's phrase "the Dissidence of Dissent 
 and the Protestantism of the Protestant Religion." 
 
 13. Write an expository essay, using the methods of 
 Arnold, on one of the following subjects: 
 
 (i) The real significance to the Freshman of his first 
 college year. 
 
 (2) The relation of athletics to scholarship. 
 
 (3) Poetry as a criticism of life. 
 
 14. Read carefully outside of the classroom Emerson's 
 essay on Culture, and write a careful comparison of this 
 essay with Sweetness and Light, considering not only 
 subject-matter, but methods of treatment both in general 
 plan and in detail. 
 
 LESSON XXII. 
 
 Study Pater's Essay on Style* Three or four weeks 
 may easily be used for this purpose, and after some con- 
 sideration of the general proportions of the essay, the 
 attention may best be fixed chiefly upon small sections, 
 single paragraphs, even single sentences and words. 
 
 1. Read the essay through, in as leisurely a way as 
 possible, at least three times before trying to make any 
 special study of it. After each reading, however, write 
 out a brief account of the impression it makes upon you. 
 Note carefully the difference between the first and the 
 second reading, the second and the third. 
 
 2. Reduce the essay to an abstract, as you did the two 
 preceding ones; notice whether this abstract is easier or 
 harder to make than the others. Discover, if you can, just 
 what the difference is, and try to determine the reasons 
 for it. 
 
 * C£. p. 284, footnote. 
 
288 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 3. Write a paragraph defining "style" as Pater con- 
 ceives it. 
 
 4. Show, by using The Meaning of Infancy and Sweet- 
 ness and Lights what Pater means by " Mind in style." 
 
 5. Examine a single paragraph that you consider 
 typical of Pater's style, to determine what are the traits in 
 virtue of which it is typical.* 
 
 Compare it with a paragraph of Arnold, of Newman, 
 of Huxley, or of Macaulay. 
 
 6. Examine Pater's sentences. What are the differ- 
 ences immediately perceptible between them and Arnold's ? 
 Which writer uses more short sentences 1 Which uses 
 more modifying words and phrases 1 
 
 7. Make a special study of Pater's appositive words and 
 phrases as modifiers, together with his use of the dash. 
 Ask yourself such questions as these : In the given sen- 
 tence, what difference does it make to abstract the 
 appositive modifiers .? Why did Pater add the appositive ? 
 Is it possible to convey the total idea in his mind without 
 resort to this device ? What is the temper of mind of the 
 man who makes much use of such devices for modifying 
 and correcting the expression of his thought .? Do 
 Macaulay's sentences reveal such a temper of mind ? 
 
 8. Take the following passage as a basis for an essay 
 on the real significance of Pater's style with particular 
 reference to his sentences. 
 
 " Still, tren chancy, whether in speaker or writer, is a 
 most effective tone for a large public. It gives them con- 
 fidence in their man, and prevents tediousness — except to 
 those who reflect how delicate is the poise of truth, and 
 what steeps and pits encompass the dealer in unqualified 
 
 * Here again it is well to ask each student to make himself 
 responsible for one paragraph, to be expounded to the class. 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 289 
 
 propositions. To such persons, a writer who is trenchant 
 in every sentence of every page, who never lapses for a 
 line into the contingent, who marches through the in- 
 tricacies of things in a blaze of certainty, is not only a 
 writer to be distrusted, but the owner of a doubtful and 
 displeasing style. It is a great test of style to watch how 
 an author disposes of the qualifications, limitations, and 
 exceptions that clog the wings of his main proposition. 
 The grave and conscientious men of the seventeenth 
 century insisted on packing them all honestly along with 
 the main proposition itself, within the bounds of a single 
 period. Burke arranges them in tolerably close order in 
 the paragraph. Dr. Newman, that winning writer, dis- 
 perses them lightly over his page. Of Macaulay it is 
 hardly unfair to say that he dispatches all qualifications 
 into outer space before he begins to write, or if he mag- 
 nanimously admits one or two here and there, it is only 
 to bring them the more imposingly to the same murderous 
 end. ' ' * 
 
 9. What does Pater mean by " the right vocabulary " ? 
 Define this in a paragraph. 
 
 ID. Examine Pater's use of words, in the light of his 
 seventh paragraph and the paragraphs immediately follow- 
 ing. Try to perceive the exact " flavor " or value of each 
 word in some single paragraph. Comment, for example, 
 on the phrase, " those long savorsome Latin words, rich 
 in ' second intention,' " (paragraph 9). 
 
 11. Collect and expound some of Pater's words which 
 are themselves ' ' rich in second intention, ' ' and words 
 embodying latent metaphor. 
 
 12. Examine the words chosen in the passages from 
 Pater, cited on pp. 43-44 and 148-149. 
 
 * John Morley: Miscellanies ; Mieaulay, 
 
29° A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 13. Write a paragraph presenting a careful and delicate 
 discrimination between two things in their nature some- 
 what akin. Some of the pairs of terms given in Lesson 
 XIX, 10, will respond to such treatment, and it might be 
 well to rewrite your treatment of some of these topics, 
 with minute attention to the form of expression. A few 
 additional subjects are suggested. 
 
 (i) The pedant and the " lover of words." 
 
 (2) Nothing resembles pride so much as discourage- 
 
 ment. 
 
 (3) Restraint is not hindrance. 
 
 (4) Fact and sense of fact. 
 
 14. Write an essay on one of the following subjects, 
 trying to make it an embodiment of style as in Pater's 
 sense of the word. 
 
 (i) The spirit of Pater. 
 
 (2) Pater's style is Pater. 
 
 (3) The style of Newman or of Carlyle, — is it " the 
 
 man " ? 
 
 (4) " Beauty is in the last analysis only fineness of 
 
 truth." 
 
 1 5. Characterize in a single word the styles of various 
 writers you have been studying; Arnold, Huxley, Carlyle, 
 Newman, Pater. 
 
 LESSON XXIII. 
 
 Read Jefferies' T/ie Pageant of Summer. One or two 
 weeks may be given to it; or longer, if it is made the 
 basis of further study of words. 
 
 I. After a first reading, try to describe the impression 
 left upon you. Is it a purely sensuous one f If not, 
 what more ? Do you get a picture of an individual scene 
 
DEFINITION IN ITS RELATION TO EXPOSITION. 291 
 
 or place ? Is there any difference between this and the 
 description of the cornfield, p. 55 ? 
 
 2. Try to express in a sentence, or a few sentences, the 
 thought of the whole. Can you disassociate the 
 " thought '■" and the means of expression ? 
 
 3. Treat with as delicate exactness as possible the 
 theme: "The Pageant 0/ Summer is not mere description, 
 it is interpretation." Or, write an appreciation of the 
 passage which shall apply to it Arnold's dictum in regard 
 to poetry, that it has the power ' ' to awaken in us a 
 wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense" of things, to 
 make us feel ourselves ' ' in contact with the essential 
 nature ' ' of things. 
 
 4. Study the appeal to the senses; to sight, in color, 
 form, movement; to touch; to the ear; to the sense of 
 smell ; to the temperature sense. Trace the appeal to its 
 source in words possessing direct or indirect sensuous 
 value. 
 
 5. Note the choice of verbs which suggest not merely 
 being or activity, but specific phases of being and of 
 activity. Colorless verbs like "be," "do," "have," 
 appear relatively seldom. Note, for example, the number 
 of specific verbs used where the generic one, ' ' flying, ' ' 
 might have been allowed to stand. 
 
 6. Study Jefferies' use of other words and phrases 
 which are in their nature specific instead of general, e.g., 
 ' ' shaken by a thrush, ' ' in the first paragraph, instead of 
 " shaken by a bird," or merely " shaken." 
 
 7. Does The Pageant of Summer give u^ "fact" or 
 "sense of fact" in Pater's meaning.? Answer in an 
 essay that shall accurately determine the nature of 
 Jefferies' writing. 
 
 8. Make a careful and discriminating comparison 
 
292 A COURSE IN EXPOSITORY IVRITING. 
 
 between the way in which Ruskin and Jefferies interpret 
 nature, as seen in The Pine Tree (pp. 177-185) and The 
 Pageant 0/ Summer. Which gives more satisfaction ? 
 Why? 
 
 9. Characterize Jefferies' style as compared with Pater's, 
 Arnold's, Ruskin's, Newman's, Carlyle's. 
 
 10. Try to find the exact word or words for all sorts 
 of out-of-door sensations, such as are suggested in the 
 following: 
 
 (i) Noonday in a clover field. 
 
 (2) Early morning. (Look \r^ 'L?ca.\tx' s Songs 0/ the 
 
 Marshes. ) 
 
 (3) Sunset in April. 
 
 (4) A June thunder-storm. 
 
 (5) Indian summer. 
 
 (6) The ocean, in a calm. 
 
 (7) A pine grove in June. 
 
 11. Try to find the adequate word or phrase for a par- 
 ticular flower. Note first, what is the word that spon- 
 taneously suggests itself when you see the flower; compare 
 notes with your classmates, and try to find the final word 
 or phrase. 
 
 12. Write an appreciation of Jefferies based on Pater's 
 phrase, " Beauty is only fineness of truth." If you have 
 already written on this phrase (Lesson XXII, 14, (4)), 
 enrich and interpret your entire treatment by making it 
 also a treatment of Jefferies. 
 
 13. Try to interpret the spirit of April, of May, of 
 October, as Jefferies does the spirit of summer. 
 
 14. Characterize in a single word the style of Jefferies. 
 If this cannot be done satisfactorily, use a sentence. 
 Which type of sentence will be best adapted to this 
 purpose ? 
 
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