It is well meant, it is bravely said; and yet, is the conclusion entirely sound? I hardly think that either the great Apostle or the august Emperor would be honestly gratified by the inscription upon their place of sepulture of the epitaph made by Mr. Stevenson, Anno Domini 1890 or so. These men are among the mighty builders of the world; their portion was not failure, but transcendent success; not defeat, but victory. But a half-truth balanced by its opposite moiety is robbed of half its glory; and what becomes of the work of art under these circumstances? And the artist is bound to work within conditions imposed upon him from without. Moreover, Stevenson was far too acute a logician not to look, when it suited his purpose, upon both sides of the shield; and in his Fables he gives both obverse and reverse. The Fables were written at intervals during the latter half of his career; and perhaps, of all the literary forms employed by Stevenson and he used most of those extant at one time or another that of the fable "set his genius best. Here romance and metaphysic, character and wit, may meet together in harmony and in the realm that is both homely and ideal; and the problem of presentment offers valuable opportunities in the matter of prose composition.

L. COPE CORNFORD: Robert Louis Stevenson.1

Although the outward appearance of the house is uninviting, the interior is warm and dainty. The odor of delicate hot-house plants is in the slightly enervating atmosphere of the apartments. It is a Russian fancy to fill the dwelling-rooms with delicate, forced foliage and bloom. In no country in the world are flowers so worshipped, is money so freely spent in floral decoration. There is something in the sight, and more especially in the scent of hot-house plants, that appeals to the complex siftings of three races which constitute a modern Russian. We, in the modest self-depreciation which is a national

1 Permission of Dodd, Mead & Co. Copyright, 1899.

characteristic, are in the habit of thinking, and sometimes saying, that we have all the good points of the Angle and the Saxon rolled satisfactorily into one AngloSaxon whole. We are of the opinion that mixed races are the best, and we leave it to be understood that ours is the only satisfactory combination. Most of us ignore the fact that there are others at all, and very few indeed recognize the fact that the Russian of to-day is essentially a modern outcome of a triple racial alliance of which the best component is the Tartar.

The modern Russian is an interesting study, because he has the remnant of barbaric tastes, with ultra-civilized facilities for gratifying the same. The best part of him comes from the East, the worst from Paris.

HENRY SETON MERRIMAN: The Sowers.1

It is well, in reviewing the character of Socrates, to mark the age in which he lived, as the moral and political circumstances of the times would probably exert an important and immediate influence upon his opinions and character. The dark ages of Greece, from the settlement of the colonies to the Trojan war, had long closed. The young republics had been growing in strength, population, and territory, digesting their constitutions and building up their name and importance. The Persian War, that hard but memorable controversy of rage and spite, conflicting with energetic and disciplined independence, had shed over their land an effulgence of glory which richly deserved all that applause which after ages have bestowed. It was a stern trial of human effort, and the Greeks might be pardoned if, in their intercourse with less glorious nations, they carried the record of their long triumph too far to conciliate national jealousies. The aggrandizement of Greece which followed this memorable war was the zenith

1 Copyright, 1899, by Harper & Brothers.

of its powers and splendor, and ushered in the decay and fall of the political fabric.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: The Character of Socrates, an early essay printed in E. E. Hale's Ralph Waldo Emerson.1

45. Books of Synonyms and Concordances: - Even the trained writer who has succeeded in making himself the master of a large vocabulary often finds that the proper word has for the moment escaped his memory, and that he must make use of a book of synonyms, or, in default of that, a dictionary. When the right word does not suggest itself, one that is of closely allied meaning will generally come to mind; and by looking up its synonyms and perhaps, if that is not sufficient, the synonyms of some word found among them, we may find the word we want. But perhaps this word is not one that we have merely forgotten, but one with which we are unfamiliar; then we shall have to see how other writers have used it. In this the dictionary should give us some help, and if we have at hand special concordances of different authors they may aid us further. It is not enough to know of the word that it is used in the sense in which we wish to use it. It may be used in various other senses; and perhaps some one of these, in the connection in which we would employ it, would be suggested to the reader more vividly than the meaning we intend to convey. All this must be considered in passing upon the fitness of the word for our use. Further, we should

1 Permission of Brown & Co., publishers.

question whether the word is in keeping; that is, has it been in use in like connection, not with the same meaning simply, but with similar context, or has its use been such as to suggest incongruous thoughts or images? Only by such careful painstaking can we make the written word fully informed with the thought and feeling that struggles in us for expression. The great good that comes to us from our training in translating the Latin and Greek classics is largely that of cultivating the faculty of patient persistence in choosing just the right word from a number of words that the vocabulary shows are admissible.

EXERCISES.

1. What are words, and why do we use them? From what sources are our English words derived?

2. Bring to the class a written statement of the character of each element of the English language as distinguished by derivation.

3. Bring to the class a list of fifty words that seem to you especially fitted for use in the literature of feeling. How large a proportion of them are Anglo-Saxon? How many of them would you mark with the symbols of the six classes of words having the highest emotional value as we have distinguished them?

4. Bring to the class a list of fifty words that seem to you especially fitted for use in the literature of thought. How many of them are classical? How many of them would you mark with the symbols of the six classes of words having the highest intellectual value as we have distinguished them?

5. Bring to the class a paragraph that seems to you an effective example of the literature of feeling, and be pre

pared to state the proportion of words of the six classes of highest emotional quality which it contains.

6. Bring to the class a paragraph that seems to you an effective example of the literature of thought, and be prepared to state the proportion of words of the six classes of highest intellectual character which it contains.

7. Bring to the class sentences containing each of the words in the following groups of synonyms, and be prepared to state how any word of each group differs in meaning from any other word of the group. A discussion of some or all of the words of each group will be found under many of them in the Students' Standard Dictionary.

To abandon, abjure, cast off, forsake, relinquish, repudiate, "surrender.

To adopt, cherish, keep, maintain, retain, uphold.

To abate, decrease, diminish, lessen, mitigate, moderate, suppress, terminate.

Absolute, arbitrary, authoritative, despotic, tyrannical.
Active, agile, alert, brisk, expeditious, lively, spry.

To address, accost, approach, greet, salute.

Abutting, adjacent, adjoining, bordering, contiguous.

To admonish, advise, caution, censure, dissuade, rebuke, reprove.

To adorn, beautify, bedeck, decorate, embellish, ornament.
Affinity, consanguinity, kin, kindred, relationship.

To affirm, assert, asseverate, declare, maintain, protest.
Agreeable, acceptable, grateful, pleasant, pleasing.

Blithe, buoyant, cheerful, cheery, genial, joyous, merry,

sunny.

Childish, childlike, petty, trivial.

Follow, observe, pursue.

Emancipation, freedom, independence, liberty.

8. Bring to the class a number of synonyms for each of the following words, and discriminate in meaning