plan was simply to compel them to masticate their food thoroughly. A small quantity thus eaten would, according to that famous projector, afford more sustenance than a large meal hastily devoured. I do not know how Rumford's proposition was received; but to the mind, I believe it will be found more nutritious to digest a page than to devour a volume.'

Pleasure. Again, figures may be employed not to explain or enforce a thought, but to adorn it, though it may be doubted whether a thought can ever be adorned without also being rendered more effective for the purpose in hand. As ornament, they are the bright gems in the rough rock, the foliage and bloom of thought. They charm us by the delightful visions which they present to our imagination. Without them, thought would be spiritless and impoverished, as would be our minds without taste, fancy, and affection. The following are rich in imaginative beauty:

'Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green.'
I've dreamed of sunsets when the sun supine
Lay rocking on the ocean like a god,
And threw his weary arms far up the sky,
And with vermilion-tinted fingers

Toy'd with the tresses of the evening star.-Holland.

Now morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl.- Milton.

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noon-day dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.-Shelley.

Most frequently, figures are of a mixed nature - both instructive and ornamental. Some are more eminently so than others. Of this character, for example, are the incomparable lines of Shelley, the most pictorial of poets: Life, like a dome of many-colour'd glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.

It thus appears that figures are used in the first instance from necessity, and are multiplied on account of their utility and beauty. More briefly, the origin and multiplication of figures depend upon necessity and choice. They were a necessary before they were a luxury as the chase was a business before it was an amusement as furs were put on for use before they were worn for ornament.

ADVANTAGES OF FIGURES.

The student should now be amply prepared to receive intelligently the following statements, which are little more than a summary of results:

1. Figures make language more copious. For when the same word is applied successively to different objects, the effect is similar to adding so many new words to the language. Thus —

"The tide (of the ocean) is rising'

'What a tide of woes comes rushing on this land!'

The tide of blood in me hath proudly flowed in vanity.' 'There is a tide in the affairs of men.'

Figurative.

6

'The noblest man in the tide of times.'

2. They give variety to language. Mark the several ways in which the shining of the sun is represented —

'And all his splendor floods the towered walls.'

'Sow'd the earth with orient pearl.'

し

With rosy fingers unbarr'd the gates of light.'

Each purple peak, each flinty spire

Was bathed in floods of living fire.'

A dazzling deluge reigns.'

The western waves of ebbing day

Roll'd o'er the glen their level way.'

'The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread.'

But yonder comes the powerful king of day
Rejoicing in the east.'

3. They give new beauty to language. This statement needs no further illustration.

4. They give impressiveness to language, by presenting the object of thought in a clearer and more striking view than literal terms could give. The following, among innumerable instances, will serve to illustrate

'As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.'
'I'll use you for my mirth when you are waspish.'
'Thoughts rush in stormy darkness through the soul.'
'It broke the Sabbath stillness round.'

'You say that Ireland is a millstone about our necks.'

A heart boiling with passion will always send up infatuating fumes to the head.'

5. They give elevation and dignity to thought when used judiciously. Compare,

'Thou'rt purpling now, O Sun, the vines of Canaan,

And crowning with rich light the cedar tops of Lebanon,' with

'The sun is shining on the vines of Canaan and the cedar tops of Lebanon.'

6. They condense thought, enabling us to express much in little. This is seen whenever we attempt to render figurative terms into plain ones—the result is a multiplication of words. We recall the ingenious device of a

student in examination, who, required to sketch the movement of the Drama from Shakespeare to Dryden, accomplished by a single stroke of his pen what others had labored through several paragraphs to do

which expressed, with even increased distinctness, decline, leaving to the imagination the pleasure of reading his symbol. Not unlike this-which, indeed, was a metaphorical use of the line-is the effect of metaphor. For example, consider Beecher's striking sentence, embodying his complete idea in a figure so expressive, so exact, so transparent, that behind the figure we perceive all the details of the idea, like liquor in a crystal vase

'Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the night.' Also, the following description of Chaucer's vast and varied resources of mind and character, which concentrates into a single sentence of splendid symbols the contents of several pages:

Chaucer is like a jeweler with his hands full; pearls and glass beads, sparkling diamonds and common agates, black jet and ruby roses, all that history and imagination had been able to gather and fashion during three centuries in the East, in France, in Wales, in Provence, in Italy, all that had rolled his way, clashed together, broken or polished by the stream of centuries, and by the great jumble of human memory; he holds in his hand, arranges it, composes therefrom a long sparkling ornament, with twenty pendants, a thousand facets, which by the splendor, varieties, contrasts, may attract and satisfy the eyes of those most greedy for amusement and novelty.-Taine.

7. They afford pleasure by presenting two objects in one view. For illustrations, the reader is referred to the examples under 2 and 4. We see, says Aristotle, one thing in another—the idea in the image.

8. They enable us to express delicate distinctions in the objects of thought. The experiment of converting the figurative into literal terms, that shall express with equal vividness the precise meaning, will render the advantage of the following apparent:

'The light struggles dimly through windows darkened by dust.' So in Spenser's description of the palace of Morpheus:' 'Both roofe, and floore, and walls were all of gold,

But overgrowne with dust and old decay,

And hid in darkness, that none could behold
The hew thereof; for vew of chereful day

Did never in that House itself display,

But a faint shadow of uncertein light;

Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away;

Or as the moone, cloathed with clowdy light

Does show to him that walkes in feare and sad affright.'

EVANESCENCE OF FIGURES.

In the flow of centuries, the original meaning of many words is lost. True, it is there - embalmed; and the scholar often brings it back to light, but it knows no resurrection into the consciousness of the people. Words that were originally figures, assume the nature of literal terms by merely becoming familiar, so that language may be regarded as a collection of faded metaphors.

Thus 'spirit' once signified the breath, a material, though extremely attenuated, substance; but now our immaterial, imperishable part. 'Man' in the AngloSaxon original meant sin, or the sinful; God,' good, or the Good. We speak of a 'dunce,' without reference to Duns Scotus, the keenest and most subtle-witted of men, but the teacher of scholastic mysticism: of 'sauntering,' without reference to the Holy Land; for the word is derived from the custom of idle people roving about the

1 The god of dreams or sleep.