the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf.' (Thomas Chalmers.)

Under the green foliage and blossoming fruit-trees of To-day, there lie, rotting slower or faster, forests of all other Years and Days' (Carlyle). Th's expresses vividly for the understanding the relation of the past to the present, as the means of growth through decay, while at the same time appealing to emotion.

Keats speaks of the music, yearning like a god in pain'; thus not only elevating the subject but also vividly setting forth the massive, yet indefinite, emotion stirred up by music in its higher forms, which seems to strive after more definite expression.

SOURCES OF SIMILITUDES.

14. The illustration of Similtitudes may be extended and varied by a survey of the SOURCES.

The sources of similitudes are co-extensive with the world of knowledge; while different departments have different capabilities and applications. A survey of these Sources may give us a more adequate conception of the vast area covered by this one department of Rhetoric.

To begin with the HEAVENS. The celestial vault, with its varying movements, has affected many minds in all ages. The emotions inspired are, first of all, Grandeur, Vastness, Sublimity, and next Awe or Terror. In a less degree, and by an indirect agency, they have become associated with gentle, benign or loving emotion. The simplicity or intelligibility of the chief movements has enabled them to be largely used as figures to the understanding.

Mythology has added to the employment of the heavenly bodies, sometimes at the cost of their degradation.

In poetry the heavenly bodies are made use of to elevate our feelings towards great men, as—

That mighty orb of song

The divine Milton.

The Sun is necessarily the most powerful of all heightening comparisons, in respect of might; while owing to his paramount agency in nature, he is also looked up to with a certain feeling of affectionate regard, such as is possible towards vast power exercised on the whole for our good.

The Stars are still a grand resort of poets, notwithstanding that the astrology of the middle ages reduced them to an ignoble function. The Elizabethan poets, living under the belief in astrology, are full of this employment, as may be seen in Shakespeare, nearly a half of his allusions to them being in this meaning.

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The specialities of the stars furnish numerous mixed comparisons --affecting both the feelings and the understanding.

Like a star, unhasting, unresting.

Chaucer says, with his usual felicity and compactness

His eyghen twynkled in his heed aright,
As don the sterres in the frosty night.

And Shelley—

Kings are like stars-they rise and set-they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.

The ingenuity of the comparison makes it rank as a figure of surprise more than of elevation or of intellectual insight.

The same may be said of Wordsworth's figure for solitary beauty-
Fair as a star when only one

Is shining in the sky;

or the same poet's description of Milton

Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.

Again-'A poem round and perfect as a star'.

The more subdued majesty of the Moon has led to its feminine personification, and to its being widely employed for evoking tenderness and pathos, still accompanied with grandeur or might.

The Planets shine as stars, and emotionally are classed with them. As revolving about the Sun in distant orbits, they are figures to the understanding also.

The Comets have affected the human mind very variously. When regarded with superstitious alarm, they were objects of power; now, they are used chiefly for the understanding, the eccentricity of their orbits and their uncertainty being the chief points of interest.

Meteors are the type of the highest uncertainty of all, from their suddenness of appearance and rapidity of extinction.

The Constellations, the Milky Way and the Nebula possess an element of grandeur, which, however, is developed chiefly by means of astronomical knowledge.

Eclipses, like Comets, have passed through a stage of superstitious awe; they are now convenient comparisons for purely intellectual uses. Occultations are a minor form of eclipse.

The general idea expressed by the word Satellite is now available, and very useful; the word was unknown in the time of Shakespeare, and even in Pope appears still with its Latin pronunciation—

Or ask of yonder argent fields above

Why Jove's satèlli-tes are less than Jove.

The EARTH, taken on the great scale, is a copious source of similitudes, affecting our feelings in the first instance. The phenomena of the Sky-Winds, Storms, Clouds, Rain, Thunder and

Lightning-inspire the emotion of Power, Force, Grandeur, and are largely employed to heighten that emotion in connection with animated beings,-as Men, Societies, Animals. The dreadful incidents of war are frequently clothed with these allusions. On the other hand, images of grateful repose and gentle pathos can be obtained from the calmer manifestations of the sky.

The Ocean-with its extent, its tempestuous upheavings, its waves, its tides-is suggestive of might, and is largely employed in imagery to excite our emotion of the sublime. Its serene moments are also turned to account. The waves and tides are further available in intellectual imagery.

The flow of water in Rivers, Streams, Cataracts, may attain to grandeur.

The irregular and often terrific action of Earthquakes and Volcanoes takes the side of sublimity,

The Mountains and mountain ranges are permanently the most imposing of earth's grandeurs, and play a great part in poetic allusions.

The Chasms and Depths laid open by nature and by art, and the Stratification of the globe, as explained by geology, with its innumerable fossil remains, are capable alike of rousing the feelings and of aiding the understanding.

The vast expanses of Plain, Forest, Desert, provide aspects of sublimity; the ocean sharing in the same attribute. As peopled with life, these aggregates are rendered still more impressive-the forest-wilds, the ocean, the rivers, the air. A new class of effects arises with human societies and civilized centres.

The MINERAL World is a rich source of comparisons: some to the feelings, as the precious stones and metals that possess glitter and beauty; others to the understanding, from more useful properties, as transparency, hardness, tenacity, roughness and smoothness, rarity and money-value.

LIFE opens up a new and exhaustless field of comparisons. The Vegetable in every part, and in every stage, is drawn upon. The beauty of the flower is a permanent object of allusions. The other parts make figures to the understanding-root, branch, leaf, bud, fruit, growth, sap, ripeness, decay.

There are upwards of a hundred thousand vegetable species; many are characterized by marked features, and are at the same time widely and popularly known. From these are obtainable figures of each kind. `The grandeur of the larger trees arouses the corresponding sentiment; the delicacy and brilliancy of the shrubs and flowers give the interest of beauty.

Animal Life has superadded processes, all brought into the play of comparisons. Health and disease, as well as the numerous varieties of disease; the chief bodily organs-bone, sinew, muscle, heart, lungs, stomach, liver, spleen, head, face, brain, tongue, arms, hands, legs, feet-can all be traced in their figurative application to remote subjects. The 'head' is one of the most diffused comparisons in the

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language; the applications of the others readily suggest themselves. The effects are mostly on the understanding.

The number of Individual Animals that have come to be employed as similitudes is very great. Strength and ferocity are typified by the lion, tiger, bear, shark; patience and docility by the sheep, ox and others.

Use is made of what is deemed characteristic of the lion, tiger, wolf, fox, ass, mule, cat, mouse, rat, eagle, bat, lark, nightingale, dove, owl, cuckoo, serpent, viper, boa, bee, ant, spider, butterfly, worm, grub, oyster.

In the Purgatorio, Dante describes the attitude of Sordello by 'the semblance of a lion when he couches'. Satan, in Milton, is seen 'squat like a toad'; Junius stung 'like a scorpion'. All these rouse our feelings. The spider drawing his victims into his web is used to excite revulsion and dread, as well as to help the understanding; being applied to the arts of sophistry. Nothing could be more expressive than Dekker's comparison-untameable as flies'; it suggests a vivid idea of total indocility.*

The various INDUSTRIES of man are largely employed in the figurative sense. Their most prevailing use is to help the understanding. A process of industry must be definite and intelligible. All the standing industries are sufficiently well known to be drawn upon for clearing up less known subjects. In Agriculture, we have the familiar operations of keeping flocks, tilling the ground and manipulating the produce. From Mining, we have derived a variety of similitudes. Building gives perpetual references to foundations, walls, roofs, cement, floors, doors, windows, &c. Seamanship is a source of many well-known comparisons. Trade gives us all the operations connected with buying and selling. Manufactures are an endless resort, from their multiplied forms in our time.

The occasions for awakening emotion by the various industries are chiefly their displays of energy and ingenuity. A large ship under full sail, a palace or a pyramid, a steam engine of hundreds of horse power, are objects of imposing might, and are used as comparisons of strength. The manufacturing and other operations that overcome the stubbornness of matter, by transporting masses, breaking, crushing, pulverizing, re-shaping, combining raw material,-inspire us with the emotion of manifested power or might.

*The poets have actually employed but a small part of the material at their command in the animal world. "Taking the bird-world alone," says Mr. Phil Robinson, "it is extraordinary with what direct loss of power and beauty the poets seem to neglect the opportunities which Nature offers them for simile and illustration, ornamental epithet or moral analogy. There are known to science more than three thousand species of birds. But poetry takes ken of a bare hundred, and of these a third are so casually mentioned that, virtually, they are useless to the text, and, so far as they contribute any special significance, force or beauty, almost any other birds might have taken their places." (The Poets' Birds, p. 4.) It should be remembered, however, that a poet's material for similitudes and illustrations is limited by his readers' knowledge as well as by his own. Hence also the extensive use of conventional or traditional ideas of animals in poetry, on which Mr. Robinson likewise comments. If an animal is introduced for purposes of illustration, it must be used in ways that readers can feel; to do otherwise would often involve lengthened and weak description instead of brief and forcible allusion.

Of all the vocations that man has ever engaged in, the one that most impresses us is War. The attitude of fighting is thoroughly congenial; the feelings aroused are the most powerful emotions of the human breast on the one hand, power, rivalry, hostility, hatred; and, on the other, the sociable and amicable sentiment towards those that we fight with and for. Hence our perennial interest in battles and contests; hence also the emotional heightening of all subjects that can be illustrated by comparison with war.

It

The organized military profession, with all its machinery, arrangements and technicalities, is the completed embodiment of the fighting art. It is referred to by way of allusion, in order to vivify all the less material forms of combat; the strife of words, of debate, of competition in business and worldly advancement. both imparts its more powerful interest, and gives a clearer embodiment to the understanding. Hence the abundance of figurative uses of the terms of war--army, battle, skirmish, gun, sword, spear, broadside, ranks, phalanx, generalship. In the New Testament, the difficulties of the Christian life are frequently represented under the figure of a warfare. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, the weapons of the Christian are elaborately described the breast-plate of righteousness,' 'the shield of faith,' 'the helmet of salvation,' 'the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God'. Bunyan has made use of the idea in the Pilgrim's Progress, and still more fully in the Holy War.

A recent religious sect has availed itself of our strong military interest to the extent of translating all its ritual and doctrines into military language, down to the most technical expressions of our army system. The pomp and circumstance of war is thereby turned to the account of the religious emotion, while the actual horrors are kept out of view.

The machinery of Civil government supplies illustrative_comparisons; some to the feelings, in consequence of the sense of Power associated with government, and others to the understanding, from our familiarity with the ordinary operations of civil rule. A king or monarch is an object of awe, and, in rare cases, of affection. Byron, by a common adaptation of the paraphernalia of royalty, says— Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains ; They crowned him long ago

On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,

With a diadem of snow.

The forms and machinery of the administration of Law find applications of the figurative sort. We speak of the court of conscience,' being a law to ourselves,' witnesses to a creed,' 'appealing to a higher power'.

The Family relations are largely invoked for figures. Being bound up with the affections, they are used for wakening up affectionate interest in other objects; as when the king is called the 'father of his people,' and when members of the same society are styled 'brethren'.