the movement of her great joy, unconscious of the coming agony, brings by rhythmic reaction the climax of intensity.

Professor Bain has called the description of Mont Blanc by Coleridge (p. 40) "still-life description at its utmost sublimity,' and has compared it with "the greater impressiveness of action," as illustrated in Byron's "Thunderstorm."

The sky is changed! and such a change! O Night, and Storm, and Darkness, ye are wondrous strong, yet lovely in your strength, as the light of a dark eye in woman! Far along, from peak to peak, the rattling crags among, leaps the live thunder!- not from one lone cloud, but every mountain now hath found a tongue; and Jura answers, through her misty shroud, back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! and this is in the night. - Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be a sharer in thy fierce and far delight, a portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, - a phosphoric sea, again 't is black

and the big rain comes dancing to the earth! and now and now, the glee of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, as if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

One difference between this and Coleridge's hymn is a difference in movement. The lines or words referring to a dark eye in woman, "have been sometimes regarded as a Byronic blemish, but does not even this phrase aid in giving life and movement to the storm? Often what we have considered as blemishes, are found after deeper study to be qualities.

AWAY! away to the rocky glen, where the deer are wildly bounding!
And the hills shall echo in gladness again, to the hunter's bugle sounding.

LORD, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

PROBLEM XXXI. — Read light and exultant lines in contrast with those full of weight. Also, practise various transitions in degrees of excitement or control, dignity or weight of ideas, and changes from exultation to regret, and from one point of view or emotion to another.

WITH that he cried and beat his breast; for, lo! along the river's bed a mighty eagre reared his crest, and uppe the Lindis raging sped. It swept with thunderous noises loud; shaped like a curling snow-white cloud, or like a demon in a shroud. So farre, so fast the eagre drave, the heart had

hardly time to beat, before a shallow seething wave sobbed in the grasses at oure feet; the feet had hardly time to flee before it brake against the knee, and all the world was in the sea. Upon the roofe we sate that night; the noise of bells went sweeping by, I marked the lofty beacon light stream from the church tower, red and high, - a lurid mark and dread to see; and awsome bells they were to mee, that in the dark rang “Enderby." They rang the sailor lads to guide from roofe to roofe who fearless rowed; and I my sonne was at my side, and yet the ruddy beacon glowed; and yet he moaned beneath his breath, "O come in life, or come in death! O lost! my love, Elizabeth." And didst thou visit him no more? thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare; the waters laid thee at his doore, ere yet the early dawn was clear. Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace, the lifted sun shone on thy face, downe drifted to thy dwelling-place.

OUT-out into the darkness

- faster, and still more fast;

The smooth grass flies behind her, the chestnut wood is passed;
She looks up; the clouds are heavy: why is her steed so slow?
Scarcely the wind beside them can pass them as they go.

"Faster!" she cries, "oh, faster!" Eleven the church bells chime;
"O God," she cries, "help Bregenz, and bring me there in time!"
But louder than bells ringing, or lowing of the kine,

-

Grows nearer in the midnight the rushing of the Rhine.
Shall not the roaring waters their headlong gallop check?
The steed draws back in terror, she leans upon his neck
To watch the flowing darkness; the bank is high and steep;
One pause
he staggers forward, and plunges in the deep.
She strives to pierce the darkness, and looser throws the rein;
Her steed must breast the waters that dash above his mane.
How gallantly, how nobly, he struggles through the foam,
And see in the far distance, shine out the lights of home!
From Legend of Bregenz.

Adelaide Procter. HURRAH! hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war. Hurrah! hurrah! for Ivry and King Henry of Navarre ! Oh, how our hearts were beating, when, at the dawn of day, We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array; With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers, And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears! There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land! And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand; And, as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood, And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war, To fight for His own holy Name, and Henry of Navarre.

The King has come to marshal us, in all his armor drest,
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.
He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;

He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.

Right graciously, he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, Down all our line, in deafening shout, “God save our lord the King !” "And if my standard-bearer fall, - as fall full well he may,

For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,

Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme, to-day, the helmet of Navarre."

GLORIOUSLY, Max! gloriously! There were sixty horses in the field, all mettle to the bone; the start was a picture. Away we went in a cloud, pell-mell, helter-skelter, — the fools first, as usual, using themselves up. We soon passed them, — first your Kitty, then my Blueskin, and Craven's colt last. Then came the tug - Kitty skimmed the walls Blueskin flew over the fences the colt neck-and-neck, and half a

mile to run - at last the colt baulked a leap and went wild. Kitty and I had it all to ourselves she was three lengths ahead as we breasted the last wall, six feet, if an inch, and a ditch on the other side. Now, for the first time, I gave Blueskin his head ha! ha! Away he flew like a thunderbolt — over went the filly — I over the same spot, leaving Kitty in the ditch — walked the steeple, eight miles in thirty minutes, and scarcely turned a hair.

XLIV.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ASSIMILATION.

THUS far some of the sympathetic actions or relations of the mind have been discussed, and exercises presented to develop them. Of the importance of this, little need be said. The variety and force, as well as the charm of vocal expression, depend upon assimilation and its revelation. Without assimilation there can be no truthfulness of emotion, which is just as important as truthfulness of thought, for truthfulness of expression depends equally upon both. The best method of securing assimilation is the development of the imagination and dramatic instinct. There are, however, many difficulties in the practice of assimilation. In the first place, men do not realize their lack of it; do not perceive that truth may be merely in the memory, and bear no relation

to their experience or character. There is thus great need of a teacher who has great insight to show the student wherein he fails to have the right attitude towards truth. Many speakers seem to have no power to change their point of view or relation to truth or to auditor. Many clergymen teach didactically not only in delivering every idea of the sermon, but in reading the Bible, and even in prayer.

The whole work of studying literature should be so systematized as to centre in assimilation and the development of the imagination and dramatic instinct of the student. This is one of the special reasons why vocal expression should be the chief aid in the study of literature.

The beginning and the procedure must vary more or less with each particular case. The student should begin with something he likes and can comprehend; but he should be led as soon as possible to something more difficult. The study of literature must not be undertaken as a pure matter of enjoyment, but as a study, though not a mechanical one; there should always be something of delight in it, as the chief aim of literature is to give pleasure.

It is best usually to begin with lyrics and narratives. The lyric develops emotion, causes intense realization of simple situations, and trains the mind to hold a situation until feeling dominates the voice. It is the first means of disciplining imaginative attention. In proportion to the depth of its feeling, a lyric is most easily assimilated, and has the most immediate effect upon the imagination and also upon dramatic instinct; in fact, dramatic action without the lyric element is apt to be mechanical and imitative.

Simultaneously with the lyric or before it with children— should come study of the story or narrative poem. It is important that the story shall be poetic. This has a different effect from that of the lyric. The story or ballad will develop the sequence of ideas. It will lead the mind to associate picture with picture, and develop that progressive imaginative conception which is the soul of dramatic movement.

This method of dealing with the individual follows the order of race development. As the song and the ballad are among the earliest forms of literature, so they should be the earliest in edu

cation. The epic is more or less of an extended ballad, and should be studied usually before the dramatic form.

The various forms of literature should be practised with a careful realization of the spirit of each. An epic we may read in contrast with a lyric; a short story or a dramatic composition may be compared with an oration.

Famous orations should also be studied. There has been great imperfection, however, in the method of such work. The student often separates oratory from any dramatic and assimilative action; he has an extravagant idea of speaking, and so declaims with loud tones, and thus totally perverts the true action of the mind in reading and in speaking.

Again, the student should be tested, not only in the study of literature, but in every practical form of speaking. He should read, recite, impersonate, speak extemporaneously, conduct a conversation, tell a story, debate, and exercise himself, in short, in every phase of vocal expression, and compare these with each other to find his faults and needs.

But again, the student must not disdain work upon the most elemental exercises; he should read in direct contrast diverse emotions. For example, he should take a line of joy and read it in direct contrast with a line of sorrow, and ascertain if he has mannerisms which prevent his making definite contrast. Such exercises quicken the consciousness of the student for form. Many able scholars are unable to recognize that they give such lines exactly alike. Such an exercise is most important to the speaker; it makes him definite in his thought in imaginative action and assimilation, and produces truthfulness of emotion. Such an exercise tends to make him realize his lack of versatility and responsiveness, of power to create and assimilate a situation.

A comparison of modes of expression is an important aid in testing assimilation as well as for its development. A speaker can test his relation to thought by rendering a monologue. It furnishes a mirror to his consciousness of himself. Again, one who always speaks in one way may occasionally adopt a different method, and so find another point of view from which to study himself.

Nor should the student underestimate exercises in transition,