years, has gradually and insensibly risen around us; new ministers fill the temples of religion; new members the seats of justice.

3. It is pleasant to command our appetites and passions, and to keep them in due order, within the bounds of reason and religion, because that is empire; it is pleasant to mortify and subdue our lusts, because that is victory; it is pleasant to be virtuous and good, because that is to excel many others; it is pleasant to grow better, because that is to excel ourselves.

10. ERRORS IN THE USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE. Exercise 85.

Correct the following errors in the use of figurative language:— 1. No human happiness is so serene as not to contain any alloy.

2. Hope, the balm of life, darts a ray of life through the thickest gloom.

3. There is a time when factions, by the vehemence of their own fermentation, stun and disable one another.

4. Let us be attentive to keep our mouths as with a bridle; and to steer our vessel aright, that we may avoid the rocks and shoals which lie everywhere around us.

5. I can never enough admire the sagacity of this country for the encouragement given to the professors of physic. With what indulgence does she foster up those of her own growth, and kindly cherish those that come from abroad! Like a skilful gardener, she invites them from every foreign climate to herself.

6. In this our day of proof, our land of hope,
The good man has his clouds that intervene;
Clouds that may dim his sublunary day,
But cannot conquer: even the best must own,
Patience and resignation are the columns
Of human peace on earth.

7. The bill underwent a great number of alterations and amendments, which were not effected without violent contest. At length, however, it was floated through both houses, on the tide of a great majority, and steered into the safe harbour of royal approbation.

8. Since the time that reason began to bud, and put forth her shoots, thought, during our waking hours, has been active in every breast, without a moment's suspension or pause. The current of ideas has been always moving. The wheels of the spiritual engine have exerted themselves with perpetual motion.

9. The man who has no rule over his own spirit, possesses no antidote against poisons of any sort. He lies open to every insurrection of ill humour, and every gale of distress. Whereas he who is employed in regulating his mind, is making provision against all the accidents of life. He is erecting a fortress, into which, in the day of sorrow, he can retreat with satisfaction.

10. A great Eastern conqueror wrote, in the following terms, to a prince whose dominions he was about to invade :

"Where is the monarch who dares resist us? Where is the potentate who does not glory in being numbered among our attendants? As for thee, descended from a sailor, since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition has been wrecked in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper that thou shouldst take in the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the port of safety; lest the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in the sea of the punishment thou deservest."

11. CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF PASSAGES.

Exercise 86.

Write a critical examination of the following passages, commenting particularly on the figures of speech and thought:-

EXAMPLES.

1. "Things light or lovely in their acted time,
But now to stern reflection each a crime;
The withering sense of evil unrevealed,

Not cankering less, because the more concealed:
All, in a word, from which all eyes must start,
That opening sepulchre, the naked heart,
Bares with its buried woes.

In this passage the poet describes figuratively the agitation of the mind, when suffering the pangs of remorse. He represents its feelings under the metaphor of a wasting disease, which withers and corrodes the frame, till it extinguishes life, and reduces its victim to a putrid corpse, from which the spectator starts back with horror. In like manner, the agonizing reflections of a guilty conscience distract the soul to such a degree, that the wicked man is forced to disclose the evil deeds which he has committed; whereby he is rendered a much more disgusting object, than a dead body that must be consigned to the sepulchre.

2.

"Sir, he may live;

I saw him beat the surges under him,

And ride upon their backs; he trode the water,
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted

The surge most swollen that met him."

In this description, a most incredible hyperbole is introduced. How is it possible for a person to ride upon the back of a wave, or tread water under his feet? What kind of enmity can surges have, and how can a person fling it from him? The incongruity of this figure shows that hyperboles should never be used, unless they are suitable to the subject which they are intended to illustrate.

1. There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

2. The chief in silence strode before,

And reached that torrent's sounding shore,
Which, daughter of three mighty lakes,
From Vennachar in silver breaks,

Sweeps through the plain, and ceascless mincs
On Bochastle the mouldering lines,

Where Rome, the empress of the world,

Of yore her eagle wings unfurled.

3. There is a joy in grief, when peace dwells with the sorrowful. But they are wasted with mourning, O daughter of Toscar, and their days are few. They fall away like the flower on which the sun looks in his strength, after the mildew has passed over it, and its head is heavy with the drops of night.

4. Men must acquire a very peculiar and strong habit of turning their eye inwards, in order to explore the interior regions and recesses of the mind, the hollow caverns of deep thought, the private seats of fancy, and the wastes and wildernesses, as well as the more fruitful and cultivated tracts, of this obscure climate.

5. As from some rocky cliff the shepherd sees

6.

Clustering in heaps on heaps the driving bees,
Rolling and blackening, swarms succeeding swarms,
With deeper murmurs and more hoarse alarms;
Dusky they spread a close embodied crowd,
And o'er the vale descends the living cloud.

So, from the tents and ships, a lengthening train

Spreads all the beach, and wide o'ershades the plain;
Along the region runs a deafening sound;
Beneath their footsteps groans the trembling ground.

A very shower

Of beauty is thy earthly dower!

Twice seven consenting years have shed

Their utmost bounty on thy head:

And these gray rocks, this household lawn,

These trees, a veil just half withdrawn,

This little bay, a quiet road

That holds in shelter thy abode;

In truth, together you do seem
Like something fashioned in a dream.

PART V.-ORIGINAL COMPOSITION.

The various kinds of original composition, in which the preceding rules and exercises may be practised, are Descriptive, Narrative, and Discursive Essays, and Expository Themes.

SECTION I.-DESCRIPTIVE ESSAYS.

A Descriptive Essay, like a descriptive paragraph (see p. 69), should explain what an object is; but its scope is wider, and it enters more fully into detail. Points, which in the paragraph are discussed in a single sentence, may occupy a whole paragraph in the essay. It affords room also for the introduction of narration and reflection, to an extent of which the paragraph does not admit.

The proper subjects of description are: 1. Places and natural scenery (topography). 2. Animals and plants (natural history). 3. The phases of nature (physics). 4. Mechanical contrivances and products of skill (the arts). With each of these classes of objects, the details introduced in the essay will necessarily vary. All the points need not be specified in every case.