If, however, the parts are grouped for artistic effect about some common centre, which, in the midst of particulars, is kept constantly in view, the description is called scenic. Macaulay thus presents the interior of Westminster Hall at the trial of Warren Hastings, the accused being the central figure of the brilliant assemblage:

The gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous realm grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated around the queen the fairhaired young daughters of the house of Brunswick. There the embassadors of great kings and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen side by side the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labors on that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition -a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There, too, was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees under the rich peacock hanging of Mrs. Montague; and there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury, shone around Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire.

Usually, in objective description, it will promote unity and definiteness to characterize the whole, the contents being given in the order that they occupy in the plan. A field, for example, is triangular, quadrangular, etc.; a hill, conical, or truncated; a town, circular and compact, or long and straggling; a tract of country, heart-shaped. The outline, the size, a central object, or an epithet may furnish the desired comprehensive type, generally, though not always, stated first:

The battle of Waterloo was fought on a piece of ground resembling a capital A. The English were at the apex, the French at the feet, and the battle was decided about the centre.- Victor Hugo.

So work the honey-bees,

Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts:
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor;

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold,
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone.-Shakespeare.

Care must be taken that the points selected shall be not self-contradictory or trivial, but true, and, as far as possible, new, essential, striking; determinate and concrete, such as particularize strongly; harmonious, such as blend readily into one image; concisely and simply put, so as not to weary the attention by exaggerating or overloading. These directions are comprehended in this:

endeavor to present such features or ideas as a sculptor or a painter could lay hold of and work out after you. Thus:

Such is the poor moorland tract of country; Zorndorf the centre of it, where the battle is likely to be:- Zorndorf and environs, a bare quasi-island among these woods; extensive bald crown of the landscape, girt with a frizzle of firwoods all round.—Carlyle.

It was a mountain at whose verdant feet

A spacious plain, outstretched in circuit wide,
Lay pleasant; from its side two rivers flow'd,

The one winding, the other straight, and left between
Fair champaign with less rivers intervein'd,

Then meeting join'd their tribute to the sea;

With herds the pastures throng'd, with flocks the hills;
Huge cities and high tower'd, that well might seem
The seats of mightiest monarchs; and so large
The prospect was, that here and there was room
For barren desert, fountainless and dry.-Milton.

Gather abundant material. Collect your own thoughts, and all the information within reach. Read what others have written upon the subject. If you are to describe something with which you may become acquainted by observation, take a note-book, and make memoranda of what you see. Says Lockhart of Scott:

On his visiting Rokeby, he said to me, 'You have often given me materials for a romance; now I want a good robber's cave, and an old church of the right sort.' We rode out, and he found what he wanted in the old slate quarries of Brignal, and the ruined abbey of Egglestone. I observed him noting down even the peculiar little wild-flowers and herbs that accidentally grew around and on the side of a bold crag, near his intended cave of Guy Denzil; and could not help saying, that as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humbler plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he replied, that in nature herself no two scenes are exactly alike; and that whoever copies truly what is before his eyes, will possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scene he records; whereas, whoever

trusts to imagination will soon find his own mind circumscribed and contracted to a few favorite images, and the repetition of these will, sooner or later, produce that very monotony and barrenness which have always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but patient worshippers of truth.

Remember that associated feelings and circumstances are a great aid to description. In this way, as in various others—interpretation, comparison, inference - the reader is put in possession of what is nearly or remotely connected with the subject treated. See, for illustration, Byron's stanzas on the dying gladiator, or Macaulay's sketch of Westminster Hall, to which, as contemplated externally, we are thus introduced:

The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus - the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings; the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers; the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment; the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame.

Beginners should formally prepare a scheme of the items to be noticed. Thus, in the description of places. and countries, an abstract might present some such shape as this:

Situation; extent; general appearance; peculiar features; surroundings; climate; soil and productions; population; civilization; relations to history; relations to contemporary countries; prospects; reflections.

In the description of persons, again, some of the following heads would be found helpful:

nose,

Age; form, tall or short, fleshy or lean, etc.; face, hair, eyes, mouth, expression; dress; manners; peculiarities; character, with its antecedents and environment, such as parentage, nationality, religion, education; characteristic utterances; mental abilities; family and social ties; comparison with other characters; prospects.

But whether skeletons of plan be actually written out or not, it is evident that when objects of any degree of complexity are to be described, the writer or speaker must proceed according to method. No artistic result can be reached without selection and order.

These remarks on representation in language may fitly conclude with a passage from Carlyle — himself one of the foremost among men in descriptive power: 'One grand invaluable secret there is, however, which includes all the rest, and, what is comfortable, lies clearly in every man's power to have an open, loving heart, and what follows from the possession of such. Truly it has been said-emphatically in these days. ought it to be repeated a loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. This it is that opens the whole. mind, quickens every faculty of the intellect to do its fit work that of knowing, and, therefrom by pure consequence, of vividly uttering forth. Other secret of being graphic is there none worth having; but this is an allsufficient one.'

Narrative.-A narrative is the exhibition of successive views, or of consecutive incidents and of objects changing from one phase to another. In this it differs from description, which represents a thing, not as becoming, growing, progressing, but fundamentally as being, irrespective of time, or at the time the scene is observed. The latter, for instance, exhibits Lady Macbeth in the attitude or action of an isolated moment, but the former recounts the whole story.

It is easy to see that the two processes are closely connected. Commonly they are combined. Indeed, the recital of important events, as a battle, a campaign, a voyage, colonization, must often be a series of descriptions. But description is rather the garniture of literature; and a means rather than the substance. The great