What he there saw in a series of acts is therefore at any rate suggestive of what usually occurred in the actual meetings of the Church." There remains for us then simply to point out the liturgical character of what St. John affirms was said and done. This can be readily seen by an examination of a few passages.

Beneath the Hebrew imagery are the outlines of the Christian worship. The four beasts incessantly cry, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty, which was and which is and which is to come."* Next the four and twenty elders fall down and worship the ever-living God, and casting their crowns before the throne say: "Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power: for thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created." When the Lamb had taken the book to read, the choir, consisting of four cherubs and four and twenty elders, begin to sing a new song: "Worthy art thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth." The whole congregation innumerable responds with: "Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honor, and glory, and blessing." The great chorus reaches the earth and all creations join in it, "Unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the dominion, for ever and ever." A great throng out of every nationality under the sun, clad in white robes, cry with a great voice: "Salvation unto our God which sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb." And the angels this time fall on their faces and worship, saying: "Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.”

*Rev. iv, 8 (R. V.).

Rev. v, 9, 10.

Rev. vii, 10.

John L. Reeder.

ART. IX.-LANGUAGE AS A FINE ART.

MAN is the master of many arts, because he is a being of splendid powers. His manifold life finds expression in manifold art. Language is the supreme art. In it the spiritual life of man finds completest expression. The range of expression through painting, statuary, and music is very limited; but language is the universal interpreter of the soul. That which has been so powerfully represented to us through painting and statuary was first and more adequately represented through literature. The masterpieces of art are but fragmentary reproductions of Homer, Dante, Milton, and Matthew. Superb pieces of workmanship they are; but we could spare them all better than we could spare a few pages from the immortal books which inspired them. The forms of nature and the deeds of man are susceptible of representation through art; but books are galleries in which the inmost life of the soul is set before us. The great epics, dramas, orations, histories, treatises upon science and philosophy are the masterpieces of art, in which human genius has found its most influential and inspiring embodiment.

Literature may be classified broadly as prose and poetry. If we distinguish between them with sole reference to the art of expression we observe that in prose words are used with primary, if not exclusive, regard to the clear expression of thought, while in poetry they are marshaled also with reference to their ingratiating effect upon the ear. The best prose writers succeed in giving to their composition some of the phonetic graces of poetry; but the poet utilizes the musical element in language to the fullest extent compatible with the clear expression of thought. It follows from this distinction between prose and poetry that prose is best adapted to conversation, business, and philosophy. Poetry is inconsistent with the energy which impels men and the accuracy which they require when language is used for these purposes. In mart, forum, and council the ear heeds not the mellifluous phrase, and periphrastic speech is weak and aggravating. But in the intervals of business, in the domestic or social circle, or in solitude, we have time for the play and rapture of our sensibilities.

Then we turn to picture, song, and story. And the poet brings us picture, song, and story all in one. The words which tell the story fling at the same time their sweet vibrations on the ear. They set to their own music the story which they tell. They mingle their own phonetic enchantment with the pleasing emotions which they kindle and the golden fancies which they suggest. Poetry, therefore, sustains to prose some such relation as pictures, statues, and music sustain to the more common and useful arts.

It may be well to note, in passing, a distinction between poetry and prose, as to their contents, or subject-matter. Poetry is, in general, the language of the imagination and the sensibilities. It utters the same sentiments and addresses the same faculties as music and painting. We feel that the exquisite verbal dress which the poet gives to his conceptions is ill suited to the subject-matter whose ordinary garb is prose. We may have the form of poetry without the spirit and power of it. On the other hand, we may have poetic sentiments in coarse and awkward prose. But poetic feeling tends by a profound instinct to utter itself in flowing, rhythmical language. As the body of the singer sways in her ecstasy, as the passionate speaker tends to singsong, as the best orators become unconsciously rhythmical and sonorous in their climaxes, so the prose writer in his most exalted moods puts much of the grace and beauty of poetry into his prose.

Assuming now that the writer knows just what to say, let us observe what is necessary to make his composition excellent. He must be able first to use such words as will deliver his thought with clearness. This is the first requisite of good writing. If, furthermore, he can so order his words that sound will be fitted to sense, and utterance be made easy to the tongue and pleasing to the ear, it will be a distinct addition to the charm of his composition. The prose writer may accomplish this by skillful phrasing, by such construction and arrangement of clauses that cadences will come at regular intervals, by pleasing successions and groupings of vowels and consonants. To all the elements of grace and strength in prose composition the poet adds more perfect rhythm and rhyme. It is apparent that the difficulties of composition increase when we add to the clear expression of thought, which constitutes good prose, the

phonetic graces essential to poetry. The writer must be a consummate artist if he do not sometimes sacrifice music to sense, or sense to music. But language which really succeeds in uttering clearly the most masterful thinking, the deepest, tenderest sensibilities, the mightiest, divinest passions of the soul, and at the same time lays the spell of music on the ear, is poetry of the highest order. In such poetry language becomes not only a fine art, but the finest of all fine arts.

Sometimes, when the verbal expression which a poet has given to his conceptions is not the most perfect, the sentiment which it embodies is so true and noble that the utterance becomes immortal. And sometimes the musician has come to the aid of the poet, and has set his words to music that has wafted them around the world. The poems "Home, Sweet Home," by John Howard Payne, and "Nearer my Home," by Phoebe Cary, are both faulty in their rhythm; but both are very tender and beautiful, while their loss, if there be any, through faulty rhythm is compensated by a delicate, charming alliteration; and the musical composers have set both of them to most ingratiating melodies.

In view of the difficulties of poetical composition we might presume that no very excellent poetry would appear in the early stages of a people's literary development. The fact is, however, that the early masterpieces of a people's literature are more likely to be poetry than prose. Homer, whose great epic is the masterpiece of Greek poetry, antedates by hundreds of years Plato, Pericles, Xenophon, Herodotus, in whose writings Greek prose came to perfection. Latin poetry reached high-water mark in Virgil, who was the contemporary of Cæsar and Cicero, the first great writers of Latin prose. Turning to Sanskrit, the literature of the ancient Hindus, we find, first and best, the Vedic hymns. Early in the classic period which followed the Vedic came the two great national epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, having about twice the bulk of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" combined. Among the writings of the Hebrews we find nothing that, as literature, can be considered so excellent and ancient as the Davidic psalms and the drama of Job. Among English writers before the close of the sixteenth century we find no prose of such merit and lasting popularity as the poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare.

In the roll of prose writers, up to the close of the seventeenth century, there are many honored names, but Shakespeare and Milton tower above all others in literary greatness. Not only so, but we have had no poets since who are, in popular estimation, their equals. The name of Dante, who appeared in the flush of the Renaissance, is still the greatest name in modern Italian literature.

How shall we account for this early maturity and excellence of poetry as compared with prose? First, by the fact that we require in prose an accuracy and fullness of knowledge which we do not seek in poetry. On this account the prose of one age is likely to be superseded by that of a subsequent and wiser age. Poetry needs not to be accurate, in the narrow sense required of prose. Homer does not lose his high place in human regard because his tales are unbelieved and unbelievable. Great books on science, philosophy, history, may be laid aside because better books will be written as the world grows wiser; but Shakespeare cares not for any impeachment of the accuracy of his historical delineations. Since his time the world has altered its opinion of some of the characters that figured in his dramas, but the spell of his mighty genius lies unbroken still on every shore where the English language is spoken. We may thus explain the fading fame of the great prose writers, while their poet contemporaries lose none of their luster with passing years.

But why does poetry in the dawn of civilization advance by such rapid strides to the very highest excellence? Because it is preeminently the language of the imagination and the sensibilities, and these are more influential in the infancy of civilization than in its maturity. Men are more like children then. The fiction, the passion, and the enthusiasm of poetry appeal to them powerfully. Even its phonetic element has a charm for them that is irresistible. The nursery rhymes which we teach our children are commended to them no less by their cadence and jingle than by the appeal which the nursery tale makes to their fancy. The old rhyming chroniclers made the prosiest matter poetical enough for their readers by their cadences, alliteration, and rhyme. The farther we go back toward the beginnings of civilization the more influential do we find the element of sound in language, compared with the sense and substance of