wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.

In the first edition of "Practical Grammar," the author fell into this vagueness. If remarks had to be made at the end of the statement, it was directed that they should be neither "too strong nor too tedious." But when he subsequently asked his class at the City Mechanics' Institution, at what point of effectiveness a man might be said to be too strong, it was agreed that there was error somewhere. And the injunction not to be "too tedious," was found to imply that we might be tedious in some degree, which hardly seemed desirable. Then it was asked, "What is Strength?" Some answered, "Power." What was Power?

Some said, "Effectiveness." But it was soon felt that these definitions left us like Swift's definition of style, that it was the use of proper words in proper places. What were proper words and proper places, still remained open questions. So if power was strength, and strength effectiveness, what was effectiveness was still unknown. It was finally agreed that to be strong was to be just, and to avoid being tedious was to be brief. We therefore agreed that "remarks just and brief" were the proper characterization. For what was just could never be too strong, and what was brief could never be too tedious. From which we also learned that the secret of the strength of comment lay in just sentiments, and that tedium was the tiresome progeny of prolixity.

CHAPTER XI.

SIMILES.

PARACELSUS announced what Cogan reiterated, that "it is as necessary to know evil as good; for who can know what is good without knowing what is evil?” This principle of contrast is that upon which truth depends for its development and effect for its power. It is the principle on which similes are founded.

To preserve peace and to do good is a very old maxim of morality. Feltham thus enforces it: "When two goats on a narrow bridge met over a deep stream, was not he the wiser that lay down for the other to pass over him, rather than he that would hazard both their lives by contending? He preserved himself from danger, and made the other become debtor to him for his safety. I will never think myself disparaged either by preserving peace or doing good." This comparison elevates the sentiment, relieves its repetition from triteness, and gives it the freshness of truth.

Paine, whom I have heard Ebenezer Elliot describe as a great master of metaphor, said of a certain body in America, that at the very instant that they are exclaiming against the mammon of this world, they are nevertheless hunting after it with a step as steady as time, and an appetite as keen as death. The immutable insatiableness sought to be characterized is rendered much more evident by these similes. It will be observed that the contrast implied in similes is not absolute; it is the comparison of a lesser degree with

a greater, which marks the idea to be enforced. This is seen in the saying of Dumont to the effect that "Both the Rolands felt convinced that Freedom could never flourish in France, and spring up a goodly tree, under the shadow of a throne." It is further seen in the remark of Mirabeau, who, when asked to counsel an obstinate friend, answered: "You might as well make an issue in a wooden leg as give him advice." The same principle is observable in the observation of Emerson at the soiree of the Manchester Atheneum, at which he spoke. Expressing the latent strength of Old England, he said she "had still a pulse like a cannon." The felicity of the simile was perfect. The same person, denoting the freshness of style of Montaigne, said the words, if you cut them, they would bleed. The "Cork Magazine" says that the preface of Thomas Davis to the speeches of Curran is, in some parts, as majestic as the orations which it prefaces; in others, displaying a wild pathos which "strikes upon the ear like the cry of a 'woman."

It does not appear to me to be necessary to enter nto the usual enumeration of the various figures of speech specially set forth in rhetorics. Under the principle of comparison so wide a range of illustration is included as to be sufficient for the use of the rhetorician. Nothing, we are told, so works on the human mind, barbarous or civilized, as a new symbol. Metaphor is the majestic ground of enforcement, and its occupation is as extensive as its power. It is by this means the poverty of language is enriched by the eloquence of the universe, and the whole of inanimate nature admitted into society with

man.

In Eastern lands they talk in flowers,

And tell in a garland their loves and cares;
Each blossom that blooms in their garden-bowers
On its leaves a mystic language bears.

Comparisons are implied by phrases. An instance occurs in Newman's works, where he says: "Heresy did but precipitate the truths before held in solution." The allusion is chemical, but very happy. Symbols expressed or implied were the weapons of Mirabeau. Contempt for the men-millinery of literature was never more forcibly expressed than in these words of his: "My style readily assumes force, and I have a command of strong expressions; but if I want to be mild, unctuous, and measured, I become insipid, and my flabby style makes me sick." Dumont, a friend of Mirabeau's, recounting his own editorial experience in preserving brevity and a wise directness in his journal, says: "The most diffuse complained of our reducing their dropsical and turgescent expressions."

By some comparisons all the power of condensation is realized. Grattan, comparing the Irish Parliament to a departed child, exclaimed: "I have sat by its cradle, and I followed its hearse." There is here all the grandeur of eloquence and grief.

In the "Auditor," Lord Viscount Barrington was described as a little squirrel of state, who had been busy all his life in the cage, without turning it round to any human purpose. The clearness attained by this simile needs no explanation. Severity can be conveyed with equal ease, as instanced in Judge Haliburton's asseveration, that humility is the dress-coat of pride.

It is a trite remark, that men draw their symbols from those departments of science or life with which

they are most familiar. The Greeks filled their language with geometrical allusions. Lieutenant Lecount, the well-known mathematician, having occasion to describe a wound, says: "One of the latest cases was a man with a round ulcer, about two and a half inches in diameter, on one side of his leg, and an oval one, five inches by two and a half, on the other side.”*

When Mr. Mould, the undertaker in "Nicholas Nickleby," speaks of Shakspeare, it is as the theatrical poet who was buried at Stratford. But it matters not whence the similes are drawn, provided they are appropriate. In a sermon preached at Newgate after the escape of Jack Sheppard, the clergyman discoursed to this effect: "How dexterously did he pick the padlock of his chain with a crooked nail; burst his fetters asunder; climb up the chimney; wrench out an iron bar; break his way through a stone wall; make the strong door of a dark entry fly before him; reach the leads of the prison; fix a blanket to the wall with a spike stolen from the chapel; descend to the top of the turner's house; cautiously pass down stairs, and make his escape at the street. door.

"I shall spiritualize these things. Let me exhort ye, then, to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance; burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts; mount the chimney of hope; take thence the bar of good resolution; break through the stone wall of despair and all the strongholds in the dark entry of the valley of the shadow of death; raise yourselves to the leads of divine meditation; fix the blanket of faith with the spike of the Church; let yourselves down to the turner's house of resigna* "Midland Observer," March, 1844.