the study of the faces flocking by. Some had death written on their features, and Dick marvelled that they could laugh. Others, clumsy and coarse-built for the most part, were alight with love; others were merely drawn and lined with work; but there was something, Dick knew, to be made out of them all. The poor at least should suffer that he might learn, and the rich should pay for the output of his learning. Thus his credit in the world and his cash balance at the bank would be increased. So much the better for him. He had suffered. Now he would take toll of the ills of others.

RUDYARD KIPLING: The Light that Failed.

The

Here we feel at once a more virile personality. words printed in italics are words that for one reason or another are indicative of emotional stress; they cannot be passed over lightly. "Running water" has definite association in our minds with things that we have experienced, and so has "comfort" and "leaning." "Embankment walls," "Thames," and "arches are concrete, and bring to mind things that, if we have not known them in experience, are suggestive of what we have wished to see or know, and so are potential of feeling. "Rush," "flocking," "death," and "marvelled" are words of specific intensity, and therefore they have force. For this or like reasons the other words printed in italics also give vigor to the style. The word "he" in the fifth sentence from the end, although little more than an articulating word and almost without meaning, has stress because the arrangement of the sentence brings it into contrast with "poor" in the preceding clause.

87. Exercise. Looking over the paragraphs that follow we see that they have the quality of force in very different degrees. There are other reasons for it than those that we can consider here; but we will see whether they differ with respect to diffuseness - or wordiness and whether the character of the words. employed will in any measure account for the higher degree of force in one than in another. In each indicate words that seem to you to be important, and determine for each paragraph how large a proportion of the whole number of words this is. In which do the important words have the most sharply defined and positive significance ? In which the least? In addition to the words that are important in themselves, do you find in any of the paragraphs words that are ordinarily unimportant and that yet seem to have especial significance here? In which are there the greater number of words to which you would give an added stress in reading the paragraphs aloud? In which of them does the diction seem the more uniform in character? Do you find in any of them any alternation of words which are especially intellectual in character with those that are more emotional? How would this affect the force of a composition? Can you now account in part for the different degrees of force in the paragraphs?

Elizabeth's mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of They gradually ascended for half a mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable eminence,

where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of the valley, into which the road, with some abruptness, wound. It was a large, handsome stone building, standing well on high ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; and in front a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something. JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice.

It is the vogue, nowadays, to sneer at picturesque writing. Professor Seeley, for reasons of his own, appears to think that whilst politics, and, I presume, religion, may be made as interesting as you please, history should be as dull as possible. This, surely, is a jaundiced view. If there is one thing it is legitimate to make more interesting than another, it is the varied record of man's life upon earth. So long as we have human hearts and await human destinies, so long as we are alive to the pathos, the dignity, the comedy of human life, so long shall we continue to rank above the philosopher, higher than the politician, the great artist, be he called dramatist or historian, who makes us conscious of the divine movement of events, and of our fathers who were before us. Of course we assume accuracy and labor in our animated historian; though for that matter, other things being equal, I prefer a lively liar to a dull one.

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL: Obiter Dicta.

88. Elegance as a Quality of Diction. While no writer whose style lacks force can hope for any permanent place in literature, it is to be remembered that a

style which is too emotional, one which arouses emotion on insufficient grounds, is equally faulty, equally sure of bringing the author to forgetfulness. A style which has the quality of elegance is one which displays taste in the author, and a writer who has taste will write with only so much show of emotion as his subject demands. Further, in addition to choosing words that will make his meaning clear and that will give to his work the degree of force that seems to him fitting, he will be careful to employ only such words and expressions as are in keeping with the subject. It may be said that the term elegance is not a thoroughly good one for the quality which gives us pleasure in writing in which a refined taste is evident, but there seems to be no better. The term beauty has been employed, since words that are fitting by that very fact appeal to the aesthetic sense; but as this term has another use in its application to that which is beautiful in subject matter and in form, it is objectionable. Propriety has also been employed as a designation for the quality of style which we are here considering, but the word is too negative in character and suggestion to be acceptable. In the narrow sense a style is elegant which is distinguished by delicacy, refinement, and other like qualities that appeal to a cultivated æsthetic sense; but, as we are using the word here, we may understand elegance merely as that quality which results from the use of words and expressions that are fitting.

In the quotations that follow elegance is shown in the

lines from Tennyson, and the lack of it in those from Thomson.

And all night long his face before her lived,
As when a painter, poring on a face,
Divinely thro' all hindrance finds the man
Behind it, and so paints him that his face,
The shape and color of a mind and life,
Lives for his children, ever at its best
And fullest; so the face before her lived,
Dark-splendid, speaking in the silence, full
Of noble things, and held her from her sleep.
ALFRED TENNYSON: Lancelot and Elaine.

In these nine lines observe the clear distinctness, the beauty of the subject matter, and the warmth and color which glow in the single words, no one of which is out of harmony with the tone of the poetry.

The sun

Scarce spreads o'er ether the dejected day,
Faint are his gleams, and ineffectual shoot
His struggling rays in horizontal lines,
Through the thick air.

JAMES THOMSON: Winter.

Here in four lines we find three words at least that belong properly to the diction of prose, rather than to that of poetry. Taste in any high degree was evidently not a part of Thomson's equipment for the exercise of his art, and elegance is therefore lacking in many of his lines.

89. Exercise. The first of the selections following is an idyllic picture of part of the Maine sea-coast as the