style for two reasons: in the first place, clearly to define the sense in which I mean not to use the word; in the second place, to emphasize the fact, which we shall find to be highly important, that in the present state of the English language hardly any word not unintelligibly technical can be trusted to express a precise meaning without the aid of definition. Style, as I shall use the term, means simply the expression of thought or emotion in written words; it applies equally to an epic, a sermon, a love-letter, an invitation to an evening party.

This definition brings us face to face with an obvious trait which the art we are considering shares with all the other arts of expression,-painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and indeed those humbler arts, not commonly reconized as fine, where the workman conceives something vet in existence (a machine,

proceeds, by collaboration e it material existence.

a flower-pot, a sauce) of brain and hand, to Thought and emotion, the substance of what style expresses, are things so common, so incessant in earthly experience, that we trouble ourselves to consider them as little as we bother our heads about the marvels of sunrise, of the growth of flowers or men, of the mystery of sin or death, when they do not happen to touch our pockets or our affections. But for all that they are with us from morning till night, and not seldom from night till morning, - for all that together they make up the total sum of what to most of us is a very commonplace affair, our earthly existence,

thought and emotion, when we stop to consider them, are the most fascinatingly marvellous facts that human beings can contemplate. They are real beyond all other realities. What things are, no man can ever know; analyzed by astronomy, the material universe vanishes in infinite systems of spheres revolving about one another throughout infinitely extended regions of space, in obedience to law that may be recognized, but not comprehended; analyzed by physics, this same material universe vanishes again in infinitely small systems of molecules bound together by the same mysterious forces that govern the stellar universe. The more we study the more we learn that neither the heavens nor the very paper on which I write these words are what they seem, and that what they really are is far beyond the perception of any faculty which the history of the human race can lead us rationally to hope for even in our most remote posterity. But what we think of all these marvels, the forms in which they present themselves to us, we know as we know nothing else. Our whole lives, from the day when our eyes first open to the sunlight, are constant series of thoughts, sometimes seemingly springing from within ourselves, often seeming to come from without ourselves, through the medium of those senses that in careless moods we are apt to think so comprehensive. To each and all of us, the final reality of life is the thought, which, with the endless surge of emotion,-now tempestuous, again almost imperceptible, makes up conscious existence.

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Final realities though they be, however, thought and emotion are essentially things that in our habitual thoughtlessness we are apt to call unreal. As we know them, they are immaterial. No systems can measure their extent or their bulk; and though they are in some degree conditioned by time, it is so slightly that we may almost say-as in a single instant our thought ranges from primeval nebulæ to cosmic death and celestial eternity — they are free from time-limit, as well as from the limits of space. Real at once, then, and unreal, or better, real and intangible, real yet immaterial, each of us who will stop to think must find the thought and the emotion that together make that fresh marvel, - himself. Each of us, I say purposely; for there is one more thing that we must remember here. Like one another as we seem, like one another as the courses of our lives may look, there are no two human beings who tread quite the same road from the cradle to the grave. No one of us in any group has come from quite the same origin as any other; no two, be they twin brothers or husband and wife, can go thence by quite the same path. The laws of space and of time forbid; unspeakably more the still more mysterious laws of thought forbid that any two of us should know and feel just the same experience in this world. If two or three of us, habitually together, suddenly utter the same word, we are surprised. The thought and emotion of every living being, then, is an immaterial reality, eternally different from every other in

the universe; and this is the reality that style must express.

And style, we remember, must express this reality in written words; and written words are things as tangible, as material, as the thought and emotion behind them is immaterial, evanescent, elusive. The task of the writer, then, is a far more subtile and wonderful thing than we are apt to think it: nothing less than to create a material body, that all men may see, for an eternally immaterial reality that only through this imperfect symbol can ever reveal itself to any but the one human being who knows it he knows not how.

When a piece of style-a poem, a book, an essay, a letter is once in existence, it may perhaps best be considered for the moment from the point of view of readers, of those to whom it is addressed. Any piece of style, we all know, impresses us in a fairly distinct way, which we rarely take the trouble to define. Most readers never know more about it than that it interests or pleases them, or bores or annoys. A little consideration, however, will show, I think, that the undefined impression which any piece of style makes may always be resolved into three parts. Present in widely different degrees in different pieces of style, no one of these factors can ever, I believe, be asserted quite absent. In the first place, you either understand the piece of style before you, or do not understand it, or feel more or less in doubt whether you understand it or not. In the second place, you are either inter

ested, or bored, or left indifferent. Finally, you are either pleased, or displeased, or doubtful whether you are pleased or not. And the more you analyze your impressions of style the more you will find, unless your experience differs surprisingly from most, that the third state of things I suggest indifference or doubt is the rarest. In short, every piece of style may be said to impress readers in three ways, -intellectually, emotionally, æsthetically; to appeal to their understanding, their feelings, their taste. Every quality of style that I know of may be reduced to one of these three classes; and these three-and these three only are different enough to deserve distinct and careful consideration. Briefly, then, I may say that the qualities of style are three, -intellectual, emotional, and æsthetic. It is convenient to name these qualities; the terms I choose are on the whole the best I have found, those which Professor Hill, of Harvard College, uses in the most sensible treatment of the art of composition I have yet found. in print. To the intellectual quality of style he gives the name "Clearness;" to the emotional, "Force;" to the æsthetic, "Elegance."

To define this generalization, a concrete example is perhaps worth while. In choosing one from personal experience, I commit what many may call a positive sin of egotism. My defence must rest on what I have said already. Style is the expression in words of thought and emotion; each man's thought and emetion differs from every other man's. I confess to a