figure, always strongly asserts, and is used in argument; exclamation expresses agitated feeling, admiration, wonder, surprise, anger, joy, grief, with respect to something that is not controverted:-"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" Personification, apostrophe, exclamation, and metaphor, may all be combined :-"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!"

8. Vision represents a past or future action or event as happening before our eyes. Instead of merely narrating their substance, vision gives the very words of another. A writer, commencing the account of an action or event in his own words, abruptly begins to repeat the words of the speaker of whom he is writing:

"Thus, at their shady lodge arrived, both stood,
Both turned, and under open sky adored

The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven,
(Which they beheld), the moon's resplendent globe,
And starry pole:-'Thou also madest the night,
Maker Omnipotent, and thou the day!'"

Vision effects its purposes also by placing the speaker on the spot where the action or event happens, and by causing him to assume the direction of what takes place. He gives orders with uncontrolled authority, with respect to things over which he has not the smallest influence. He addresses the spectators on every important occasion, and they can see nothing but as he directs their attention. The following picture of the fatal inactivity of the Scottish army at Flodden is a fine instance of commingled apostrophe and vision:

"And why stands Scotland idly now,
Dark Flodden! on thy airy brow,
Since England gains the pass the while,
And struggles through the deep defile?
What checks the fiery soul of James?
Why sits that champion of the dames

Inactive on his steed,

And sees, between him and his land,

Between him and Tweed's southern strand,
His host Lord Surrey lead?

What 'vails the vain knight-errant's brand?—
O, Douglas, for thy leading-wand!
Fierce Randolph, for thy speed!
O, for one hour of Wallace wight,
Or well-skilled Bruce, to rule the fight,
And cry, St Andrew and our right!'
Another sight had seen that morn,
From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn,
And Flodden had been Bannockburn!"

SIMILES FROM THE POETS.

"THAT strain again;-it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour."

SHAKSPEARE.

O CASSIUS, you are yoked to a lamb
That carries anger, as the flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.

THE superior fiend

Id.

Was moving toward the shore: his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,

Behind him cast; the broad circumference

Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesolè,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.

MILTON.

HER feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice stole in and out,

As if they feared the light.

SUCKLING.

FOR Loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;

True as the dial to the sun,

Although it be not shined upon.

Dim, as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,

BUTLER.

Is Reason to the soul: and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere,
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight,-
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.

DRYDEN.

TRUE ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

POPE.

BUT in his duty prompt at every call,
He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries,
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

GOLDSMITH.

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.
As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

Id.

BUT pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow-fall in the river,
A moment white-then melts for ever;

Or like the borealis race,

That fit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow's lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm.

It was a fair and mild autumnal day,

BURNS.

And earth's ripe treasures met the admiring eye,
As a rich beauty, when her bloom is lost,
Appears with more magnificence and cost.

CRABBE.

My soul, though feminine and weak,
Can image his even as the lake,
Itself disturbed by slightest stroke,
Reflects the invulnerable rock.

SCOTT.

"TWAS thine own genius gave the final blow,
And helped to plant the wound that laid thee low :
So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,

And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart.

BYRON.

MAN is but dust :-ethereal hopes are his,

Which, when they should sustain themselves aloft,
Want due consistence; like a pillar of smoke,

That with majestic energy from earth

Rises, but, having reached the thinner air,

Melts, and dissolves, and is no longer seen!

WORDSWORTH.

BEHIND them, Rome's long battle
Came rolling on the foe,
Ensigns dancing wild above,

Blades all in line below.
So comes the Po in flood-time

Upon the Celtic plain :

So comes the squall, blacker than night,
Upon the Adrian main.

Now, by our Sire Quirinus,
It was a goodly sight
To see the thirty standards
Swept down the tide of flight.
So flies the spray of Adria

When the black squall doth blow;
So corn-sheaves in the flood-time
Spin down the whirling Po.

MACAULAY.

AND while he waited in the Castle Court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear through the open casement of the Hall,
Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form,
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint.

TENNYSON.

THE TIDES.

It is surely strange that a puny globe, revolving at the distance of 239,000 miles from our earth, should lift the waters of the ocean, and compel huge ripples to course across its surface in regular succession. Yet such is the fact. Yonder, in the great silent sea which hides the mysteries of the South Pole, the water begins to heave under the attractive force of the moon,—or, as one might say, under the sinewy pull of the Man in the Moon. A broad wave is formed, which rushes, or seems to rush, to the north, for the particles have no progressive motion, but simply leap upwards, as if in a vain struggle to reach the moon. Following the course of that wave into the Indian Ocean, you find that in about twenty-two hours from the time of its appearance at the southern extremity of New Zealand, it is riding in the Delta of the Ganges. Meanwhile, another branch of the same great billow makes for the African coast, and rolls into the Atlantic after doubling the Cape of Good Hope. In six