persons described or the events narrated. A very graceful example is in the scene where Donatello calls upon Miriam in her studio and finds her "busied with the feminine task of mending a pair of gloves":

There is something extremely pleasant, and even touching—at least, of very sweet, soft, and winning effect-in this peculiarity of needlework, distinguishing women from men. Our own sex is incapable of any such by-play aside from the main business of life; but women—be they of what earthly rank they may, however gifted with intellect or genius, or endowed with awful beauty-have always some little handiwork ready to fill the tiny gap of every vacant moment. A needle is familiar to the fingers of them all. A queen, no doubt, plies it on occasion; the woman-poet can use it as adroitly as her pen; the woman's eye, that has discovered a new star, turns from its glory to send the polished little instrument gleaming along the hem of her kerchief. . . . A vast deal of human sympathy runs along this electric line, stretching from the throne to the wicker-chair of the humblest seamstress, and keeping high and low in a species of communion with their kindred beings, etc.—HAWTHORNE: Marble Faun, i. ch. 5.

Even a general proposition (assertion), which is in strictness something to be proved (see § 63), is usually first expounded, that the reader may clearly perceive the precise point to be proved. Thus, whoever undertakes to persuade us that "fortune favors the bold" should first explain what he means by "fortune" and by "bold;" for by fortune some persons might understand mere "luck," others "providence;""bold" might mean " venturesome," or again, "knowing the danger, but not shrinking from it."

In discussing a general moral theme the writer frequently goes beyond exposition, and proceeds to apply and enforce his teaching for the reader's personal improvement. This is the practice in sermons, which are usually the exposition of Christian doctrine.

The various processes of exposition proper may be summed up under three heads: Definition, Classification, General Statement.

DEFINITION.

49. Defining an object means separating it from all other objects by marking the boundary-lines; e. g., a telescope is said to define accurately when it enables us to see clearly the lines of a heavenly body. A photograph is poor in definition when the lines are faint or blurred. In rhetoric and logic we define a term when we distinguish it from every other term.

Defining, in the strict sense, is extremely difficult, too difficult for those who have not mastered logical methods, for it is essentially logical in its procedure. It consists in stating the genus and the differentia, i. e., the class to which the object defined belongs, and the peculiarities which differentiate it from everything else of that class. Thus Ruskin defines architecture as:

"The art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them contributes to his mental health, power, and pleasure."-RUSKIN: Seven Lamps, ch. i.

In other words, building (" edifice") is the genus; man's pleasure is the differentia.

Science, especially mathematics and physics, abounds in rigorous definitions; e. g., "a circle is a plane figure contained by one line everywhere equidistant from a point within called the centre," i. e., plane figure is the genus, radius-measurement the differentia.

In the sciences which deal with life defining is sometimes less easy, the dividing-line is less readily apprehended. Huxley (Lay Sermons, ch. v.) thus defines the class Mammalia as "all animals which have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their young." In ch. xii. he defines a horse as an animal having: "1. A vertebral column; 2. Mammæ: 3. A placental embryo; 4. Four legs; 5. A single well-developed toe in each foot provided with a hoof; 6. A bushy tail; 7. Callosities on the inner sides of both the fore and the hind legs."

In human affairs the difficulty of defining increases in proportion as we pass from the material to the spiritual, until at last definition-in any just sense becomes an impossibility. We may readily define a "minor" to be

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a person of either sex who has not attained the age at which full civil rights are accorded." But to frame a legal definition of "property" is much less easy. To define "church," i. e., not the building, but the association of persons for religious purposes, is perhaps impossible. Catholics and Protestants would not agree, nor would any two Protestant denominations agree wholly. "Literature,"

eloquence," "poetry," are not to be defined.

The young reader need not hesitate to admit that he uses words which he is unable to define. These words are not always abstract terms; on the contrary, they may be quite concrete. Certainly the average boy would be puzzled were he unexpectedly called upon to define "knife," "pencil," "floor," "room." Still harder would he find "lesson," " question," "answer."

How can the young learn to use terms? To this it may be answered that it is the office of education in general, and not of any one instructor alone, to teach the accurate use of terms. Every department of knowledge has its own. terminology, and every student who masters the subject masters the terms, with or without formal definition. Thus, one who reads poetry diligently will acquire a sense of its significance, even although he will never be able to translate that significance into a definition.

A few practical suggestions may be helpful:

1. Consult dictionaries constantly, but remember that no dictionary is quite complete or perfect. Frequently the best part of a dictionary is in its quotations from good authors, illustrating the shades of meaning of a word.

2. In reading, note carefully whether the author uses the same word in different senses in different places. If he does, try to express the difference.

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3. Consult teachers and other persons of experience, and get them to suggest an explanation or correct any misuse of a term.

4. In writing, attach a definite meaning to each term, and carefully avoid using it in any other sense in that composition.

50. Loose or Indirect Definition.—The sense of an indefinable term may be conveyed indirectly. Thus Swift defined style to be "proper words in their proper places." Coleridge improved upon this:

The definition of good Prose is-proper words in their proper places; of good Verse—the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is in general a fault. . . . But in verse you must do more; there the words, the media, must be beautiful, and ought to attract your notice.-S. T. COLERIDGE: Table Talk, ii. 214.

Emerson characterized eloquence as "a taking sovereign possession of the audience;" De Quincey (Works, x. 92) wrote: "By eloquence we understand the outflow of powerful feelings upon occasions fitted to excite them." (See also Webster, §58.) Matthew Arnold (Essays in Criticism, p. 36) defined criticism to be "a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." This does not distinguish criticism from learning, on the one hand, or from teaching, on the other. But it relieves criticism from the charge of being mere negative fault-finding, and shows it to be a positive and beneficial accomplishment.

CLASSIFICATION.

51. Under this head is included Division, and also Partition.

An understanding of the process of Classification may be got from its application in natural history:

I have hitherto spoken as if the lobster were alone in the world, but,

as I need hardly remind you, there are myriads of other animal organisms. Of these, some, such as men, horses, birds, fishes, snails, slugs, oysters, corals, and sponges, are not in the least like the lobster. But other animals, though they may differ a good deal from the lobster, are yet either very like it, or are like something that is like it. The crayfish, the rock lobster, and the prawn, and the shrimp, for example, however different, are yet so like lobsters, that a child would group them as of the lobster kind, in contradistinction to snails and slugs; and these last again would form a kind by themselves, in contradistinction to cows, horses, and sheep, the cattle kind.

But this spontaneous grouping into "kinds” is the first essay of the human mind at classification, or the calling by a common name of those things that are alike, and the arranging them in such a manner as best to suggest the sum of their likenesses and unlikenesses to other things. Those kinds which include no other subdivisions than the sexes, or various breeds, are called, in technical language, "species." The English lobster is a species, our cray-fish is another, our prawn is another. In other countries, however, there are lobsters, cray-fish, and prawns, very like ours, and yet presenting sufficient differences to deserve distinction. Naturalists, therefore, express this resemblance and this diversity by grouping them as distinct species of the same "genus." But the lobster and the cray-fish, though belonging to distinct genera, have many features in common, and hence are grouped together in an assemblage which is called a "family." More distant resemblances connect the lobster with the prawn and the crab, which are expressed by putting all these into the same "order.” Again, more remote, but still very definite, resemblances unite the lobster with the wood-louse, the king-crab, the water-flea, and the barnacle, and separate them from all other animals; whence they collectively constitute the larger group or "class," Crustacea. But the Crustacea exhibit many peculiar features in common with insects, spiders, and centipedes, so that these are grouped into the still larger assemblage or "province" Articulata; and, finally, the relations which these have to worms and other lower animals are expressed by combining the whole vast aggregate into the "sub-kingdom" of Annulosa.-HUXLEY (vi.), p. 101.

In other words, we include all the common English lobsters in one species, the American lobsters in another species; all the species of lobster in the world we sum up in the genus Lobster; the genus lobster and the genus crayfish we sum up in the family Homarida; this and kindred