poetic and of pathos can be hinted in a single emblematic object. A magnificent instance-be one as good as a hundred. When man fell, Milton assures us that"Earth trembled from her entrails, as again

In pangs; and Nature gave a second groan.

Sky lower'd; and, muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completing of the mortal sin."

Or mark the force of the emblematic storm in Tennyson's "Sisters;" a howl of tempest that raves and maddens in every tiger-stanza:

"I kissed his eyelids into rest;

His ruddy cheek was on my breast;

The wind is raging in turret and tree."

Why, in the name of all that is fresh and arousing, is this not oftener heard from the pulpit? While the summer sunshine through the high church windows pours flashingly, eloquent for God; or over the bread in the sacrament the white cloth lies, like a shroud over a corpse, admirable would the effect be of leaving the emblem unapplied; for it is well to trust something to the audience. See Dr. Emmons, page 375. This we heard lately, suppose-though your author coins it:

"How sad the ruin of female virtue! The purest thing hath been trampled into the most polluted! The other day the pure snow from heaven lay on the pavement of a street near by. How it glistened in the beam of God! Two days after, it was a soiled and sullied mass."

From the Italian of Giambatista Volpe permit your author to translate for you the following sonnet, consisting all of emblems:

"AN APPEAL TO YOUTH.

"To battle trained, the death-defying steed
Hastes fearless to the throng and din of fight.
But if unrein'd he loiters in the mead-

Soon fades his kindling eye, his warrior might.

Mirror for wood-nymph's form, the streamlet leads
Down from the mountain lake its waves of light;
If sluggish grow their course, unsightly weeds
The life and lustre of the waters blight.
The gallant ship defies the flashing sea;

But lingering in the dock, the moths consume
Heaven-pointing mast and white sail fluttering free.
Ye young! be warn'd; lest indolence engloom
Your manhood in its base obscurity,

And never laurel round your forehead bloom!"

No more pathetic instance will you find than that in the "Iliad," Book II., 308-332. As the serpent caught and slaughtered the sparrow and her brood of eight, so were the Achæans to storm Troy after the nine years of siege. The wise Odysseus dwelt all on this, in a most effective speech at a most critical moment. How instructive this old and triumphant case of pleading by emblem!

As Theodore Tilton refers to the Weird, in which Mrs. Browning excels, we quote from him:

"She abounds in figures, strong and striking, sometimes strange and startling; sometimes grotesque and weird; often, one may say, unallowable; but always having a piercing point of meaning that gives warrant for their singularity. Swords have not keener edges, nor flash brighter lights than the sudden similes drawn by this poet's hand. She illustrates at will from nature, art, mythology, history, literature, Scripture, common life. She plucks metaphors wherever they grow, and, to those who have eyes to see, they grow every where. Occasionally, taking for granted a too great knowledge on the part of her readers, even of such as are cultivated, her figures are covered with dust of old books, and their meaning is hidden in a vexing obscurity. But, on the other hand, her sentences often are as clear as ice, and have a lustre of prismatic fires."

CHAPTER XII.

FIGURES OF RHETORIC.

PART SEVENTH.

The Weird.-The Quaint.-Antithesis.-Epantiosis.-Antimetaboles.-Parison or Annomination.-Omoioteleuton. -Isocolon.-Commutation.

XLVII. WE open this chapter with a turn of writing capable of fine adaptations, yet needing only short notice the Weird; never heretofore registered as figurative, but susceptible of effects that lie deep, and which are very beautiful, though extremely difficult to define. Often we feel them when we can not describe them; as in this by Horatius Bonar, a sainted Scottish clergyman:

"Beyond the smiling and the weeping,

If devices such as this, partly linguistic and partly of thought, be hailed by you as figurative, you will feel that many a figure goes much deeper into the soul than it is usual to imagine. Study the poems of George Herbert and of Francis Quarles for abundant examples, and the "Ancient Mariner" and the "Christabel" of Coleridge, in which the weird is not only the pervading spirit of the whole, but marks many of the individual expressions. XLVIII. The Quaint is another form of words never before deemed figurative, yet fairly claiming so to be catalogued. George H. Clark indulges in a form, shall we say of words, that can get itself arranged under not any of the old figures-when he sums up the successful result of a friend's application for legal damages for a railway accident in this wise:

"And he writes me the result

In his quiet way as follows:
That his case came up before
A bench of legal scholars,
Who awarded him his claim
Of $1500."

XLIX. But let us not innovate too much at a time; let us get back among the regular veterans. We turn your attention to Antithesis, called Epantiosis, when things very different are compared. Throughout the Book of Proverbs, the practical man's vade-mecum, the Dictionary of Good Sense, fine examples every where occur. Consult the book at random. Antithesis is well fitted for sarcasm, epigram, character-painting; its strongpointed condensations make it suit the climax of oratory; but for the pathetic, for the tragic scenes of the drama, it has too labored an air. In the writings of Dr. Johnson, as in his "Rambler," it is often false, lying chiefly in the words; in the letters of the political thunderer, Junius, it is real, and lies in the images and thoughts. Byron in his shorter poems is constantly using it.

To begin with Pope's celebrated contrast of Virgil and Homer:

"Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the better artist; in the one we most admire the man, in the other the work. Homer hurries us with a commanding impetuosity; Virgil leads us with an attractive majesty. Homer, like the Nile, pours out his riches with a sudden overflow; Virgil, like a river in its banks, with a constant stream."

Equally famous Johnson's comparison of Dryden and Pope; we quote one very characteristic sentence-Johnson all through:

"Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation. Pope's is the velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe and leveled by the roller."

Or turn to Dr. Campbell's "Philosophy of Rhetoric," a book which it would be almost impossible to recommend too highly:

"All art is founded on science, and the science is of little value that does not serve as the foundation of some beneficial art. On the most sublime of all sciences, theology and ethics, is built the most important of all arts-the art of living."

In another passage he has this:

"Taste consists in the power of judging, genius in the power of execution. Taste appreciates, genius creates."

Take an illustration from another Scotchman, Dr. Thomas Chalmers, from his magnificent "Astronomical Discourses;" where he contrasts the telescope and the microscope:

"The one led me to see a system in every star; the other. leads me to see a world in every atom. The one taught me that this mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people and of its countries, is but a grain of sand in the high field of immensity; the other teaches me that every grain of sand may