of youth and passion, and the fresh glows of the intellect and imagination, endow them with a false brilliancy which makes fools of themselves and other people. Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely in their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing-day.-HAWTHORNE: Seven Gables, ch. xii.

54. Expository Description.-Attention was called in § 47 to generalized description. The generalizing process may be carried to such length that the composition ceases. to be description, and becomes exposition. Irving's paper entitled "John Bull," in the Sketch-Book, is an instance. The following passage will suffice for illustration:

John Bull, to all appearance, is a plain, downright, matter-of-fact fellow, with much less of poetry about him than rich prose. There is little of romance in his nature, but a vast deal of strong natural feeling. He excels in humor more than in wit; is jolly rather than gay; melancholy rather than morose; can easily be moved to a sudden tear, or surprised into a broad laugh; but he loathes sentiment, and has no turn for light pleasantry. He is a boon-companion, if you allow him to have his humor and to talk about himself, and he will stand by a friend in a quarrel with life and purse, however soundly he may be cudgelled.— IRVING: John Bull.

A comparison of the above with the descriptions of Queen Elizabeth (§ 38) and Master Simon (§ 12) will make the difference felt. The difference between John Bull and the generalized description of the Punch-dinner (§ 47) is less obvious, but is nevertheless real. The writer of the Punch-dinner is trying to describe one place and one set of persons, but he makes his description applicable to more than one occasion; whereas Irving's John Bull is not intended to be the portrait of any one Englishman, or even to be applicable directly to any one, but is the generalization of all that Irving read and observed of English character. It is like a composite photograph.

55. General Law.-The process of expounding a general law is illustrated by Tait's statement, based upon Newton's Principia, of the law of gravitation:

Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force whose direction is that of the line joining the two, and whose magnitude is directly as the product of their masses, and inversely as the square of their distance from each other.-TAIT: Prop. of Matter (vii.), p. 110.

The phenomenon is thus measurable, directly according to mass, inversely according to distance.

A law of biological science-viz. the measurable circulation of the blood-is thus stated:

The friction in the minute arteries and capillaries [connecting the arteries with the veins] presents a considerable resistance to the flow of blood through them into the small veins. In consequence of this resistance, the force of the heart's beat is spent in maintaining the whole of the arterial system in a state of great distention; the arterial walls are put greatly on the stretch by the pressure of the blood thrust into them by the repeated strokes of the heart; this is the pressure which we spoke of above as blood-pressure. The greatly distended arterial system is, by the elastic reaction of its elastic walls, continually tending to empty itself by overflowing through the capillaries into the venous system; and it overflows at such a rate, that just as much blood passes from the arteries to the veins during each systole and its succeeding diastole as enters the aorta at each systole.—FOSTER: Physiology, ch. iv. 8 119.

56. In human affairs-politics, history, ethics, literature, etc.-it is far more difficult to formulate general laws. Much, indeed, that is popularly called "law" is in strictness no law at all, but merely the statement of a phenomenon that occurs frequently, perhaps usually, but not invariably. Thus, not a few of the laws of political economy are nothing more than statements of general tendencies. They operate "in the long run," but not in every single case. Therefore we cannot count upon them as we count upon the law of gravitation. E. g., men usually buy where they can buy cheapest; but there are exceptions; one man may have certain prejudices or habits which lead him to one shop rather than another.

The "laws" that we read in our statute-books are not laws, but statutes, i. e., the expression of the will of the

people through its legislature. And, like every other expression of will, they can be recalled, i. e., repealed. E. g., the Silver Bill was merely the will of Congress that so much silver should be bought every year by the Treasury. When repealed in 1893, it ceased to be the national will.

Many of the so-called laws in historical writings are only hasty and untrustworthy generalizations; e. g., the following:

Thierry, in his “History of the Gauls," observes, in contrasting the Gaulish and Germanic races, that the first is characterized by the instinct of intelligence and mobility, and by the preponderant action of individuals; the second, by the instinct of discipline and order, and by the preponderant action of bodies of men.-MATTHEW ARNOLD: A French Eton, p. 481.

Even were the above true, it would scarcely be a law, but rather a general phenomenon. Besides, our knowledge of the Gaulish race is altogether too meagre for such sweeping induction.

The popular belief in self-betrayal, “murder will out" (see § 69), is set forth by Webster in one of his great imaginative efforts:

Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed; there is no ref

uge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.-WEBSTER: Murder of White.

The following statement of the fundamental law of civil society, although somewhat abstruse, deserves attention:

If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence? Rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of an uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the first law of nature. Man cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it.— BURKE: Reflections, p. 65.

57. General Relation.-By relation is meant here the connection between two things, the influence exerted by one upon the other.

Thus, we may speak of the relation between the United States and England, and this relation we may discuss in its bearing upon politics, trade, literature, science, religion, etc. Again, we may discuss the general relation between man and wife, between parent and child; or the relation between the citizen and the State, or between man and his Creator.

The most general relation is that of cause and effect. It exists both in nature and in human society, and when demonstrated in nature it is susceptible of strict scientific exposition. E. g., Tyndall explains the blue of the atmosphere to be caused by the reflection of light from extremely minute particles:

Small in mass, the vastness in point of number of the particles of our sky may be inferred from the continuity of its light. It is not in broken patches, nor at scattered points that the heavenly azure is revealed. To the observer on the summit of Mont Blanc the blue is as uniform and coherent as if it formed the surface of the most close-grained solid. A marble dome would not exhibit a stricter continuity. . . . Everywhere through the atmosphere those sky-particles are strewn. They fill the Alpine valleys, spreading like a delicate gauze in front of the slopes of pine. They sometimes so swathe the peaks with light as to abolish their definition. This year I have seen the Weisshorn thus dissolved in opalescent air. By proper instruments the glare thrown from the sky-particles against the retina may be quenched, and then the mountain which it obliterated starts into sudden definition. Its extinction in front of a dark mountain resembles exactly the withdrawal of a veil. It is the light then taking possession of the eye, and not the particles acting as opaque bodies, that interferes with the definition. By day this light quenches the stars; even by moonlight it is able to exclude from vision all stars between the fifth and the eleventh magnitude. It may be likened to a noise, and the stellar radiance to a whisper drowned by the noise.-TYNDALL: Fragments (vii.), p. 149.

A causal relation in human affairs is less easy to expound. Occasionally, but not often, we may discern a cause without apparent effect. More commonly we are puzzled by an effect without assignable cause. Even where we plainly discern both cause and effect, we may fail to state the ratio very exactly; e. g., there is, beyond doubt, a connection between poverty and crime, but this relation cannot be formulated as exactly as the corresponding relation between bad food and certain kinds of disease.

For a specimen of effect without assignable cause the reader may study Webster's speech in the celebrated Kenniston case. One Major Goodridge alleged that he had been attacked and wounded and robbed of a large sum of money while travelling at night, and charged the Kenniston brothers and some other men with the crime. Webster defended successfully his clients by his sharp crossexamination of Goodridge, in which he involved the latter