come upon, signifies the act or process of finding, or of achieving a certain result by the original combination of known elements. Such, then, is much of the character of rhetorical invention in the application to ordinary discourse; but combined with imagination, as in the higher flights of oratory, or the soarings of poetry, it claims something more. It consists then not only in finding what before existed, as in relation to time and space, but it creates new realms in which to work, and peoples them with orders and hierarchies likewise born at the dictum of the poet's thought. In this view invention means creation, and it corresponds with our idea of the entirely original in poetic genius.

Arrangement, called by the great Roman orator disposition, is the orderly setting forth of the things invented. It includes the method by which the thoughts of the writer are placed before the reader to instruct, and the successive steps of that instruction.

Let a subject be suggested to us for a discourse, and from the moment we begin to think about it, a commingled stream of facts, fancies, and combinations rush in upon the mind, in its effort to present the subject clearly.

What is more common than to find writers of good invention, so careless, or so naturally disorderly, in their arrangement as to be obscure, and disjointed in their discourse? Like troops in a rabble, their

thoughts have no union, and no massive force: Arrangement is the strategy and tactics which bring them into clockwork order, movement, and effectiveness. Strictly speaking, Arrangement is rather a second part of the process of Invention, than a distinct division of Rhetoric.

Style, which Cicero has called Elocution, is the language in which the author expresses his meaning: the fitness of the speech to the thought, as invented and arranged in the mind. And this analysis now given, is in reality but a return to that of Aristotle, which Cicero, with the ambition to be regarded as the founder of a new system, tried to improve upon, and which was stated to be Invention, Elocution (Style), and Disposition (Arrangement).

Perhaps one of the happiest illustrations of the excellence of this analysis of Aristotle, is that used by Mr. John Quincy Adams, to describe how exactly it follows the process of divine wisdom in the creation of light, as given in the exact words of Scripture:

1st. The Invention of the Creator is thus given: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; and the earth was without form and void."

2d. The Elocution or speech: "And God said, Let there be light."

3d. The Disposition: « And God divided the light

from the darkness; and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.'

Thus we have the highest warrant for this statement of the constituent branches of the rhetorical art, which, after some other necessary preliminary remarks, we shall endeavour clearly to explain.

Before doing this it will be necessary to consider what place among the arts is occupied by Rhetoric.

CHAPTER III.

THE RELATIONS OF RHETORIC TO ESTHETICS.

(15.) Rhetoric among the Arts.

THE Arts have been divided among civilized nations into two general classes: the fine Arts, and the common or useful Arts. This is evidently a division, based upon the general purpose to which Arts are applied; the fine Arts being designed to improve and refine the imagination, and thus to please the taste; while the useful Arts have for their object to benefit mankind practically.

The term Fine Arts has been also varied by being called Elegant or Liberal Arts, and among the French, les beaux Arts, or the beautiful Arts; while the useful Arts have also been called the mechanical or practical Arts. Among the fine Arts are to be classed Painting, Sculpture, and its art-development, Poetry.

But if, according to the division just stated, we endeavour to classify Rhetoric as an Art, what shall be its place? It certainly is a useful Art in that it

constructs and sets forth discourse, the medium of communication between men, the very foundation of law and government; but it is no less certainly an elegant Art, developing and subsidizing beauty not only as decorative or ornamental, but as it is directed in its fitness of the means to the end. With this view the French have placed it in the general division which they call belles lettres.

Since, then, it seems that Rhetoric is to be placed in both classes, it will be evident that this division of Arts will often be a distinction without a difference: Architecture, as an Art, is to be placed in this same category; its first aim is indeed utility, but in all its parts it has much to do with that beauty and harmony which at once class it among the elegant Arts.

The truth is, that, as practical science progresses, there will be a progressive union of the useful and the beautiful, so that most Arts will partake of both, and the long-established division into fine and useful Arts be at length given up, as no longer just. Look at a fine ship, with the graceful lines of her hull, her tapering spars, her tall masts, and slender ropes scarcely defined against the sky; or with canvas gracefully rounded with the breeze, as she leaps to the careering seas: is she not beautiful in every part, and in the general adaptation of the whole to the design of the builder? and yet every part is designed and the whole is arranged with a reference,