expectancy; and this naturally sets the writer to studying various means of preparing for approaching events or situations. Countless shadings and combinations of these are available; the following are some of the most palpable.

1. The element of contrast. It is a natural impulse to make calm scenes alternate with stormy or exciting ones, to set people of contrasted character or appearance over against each other, to give opposite moods of the same person in dramatic succession. Life as well as literature is full of such antitheses, occurring in every variety of shading and impressiveness.

EXAMPLE. The most intense situation in Kenilworth, Queen Elizabeth's discovery of her favorite Leicester's treachery to Amy Robsart, is prepared for by a contrasted scene wherein her favor to him reaches its most flattering expression. The following paragraph points the contrast : — If, in the midst of the most serene day of summer, when all is light and laughing around, a thunderbolt were to fall from the clear blue vault of heaven, and rend the earth at the very feet of some careless traveller, he could not gaze upon the smouldering chasm, which so unexpectedly yawned before him, with half the astonishment and fear which Leicester felt at the sight that so suddenly presented itself. He had that instant been receiving, with a political affectation of disavowing and misunderstanding their meaning, the half uttered, half intimated congratulations of the courtiers upon the favor of the Queen, carried apparently to its highest pitch during the interview of that morning; from which most of them seemed to augur, that he might soon arise from their equal in rank to become their master. And now, while the subdued yet proud smile with which he disclaimed those inferences was yet curling his cheek, the Queen shot into the circle, her passions excited to the uttermost; and, supporting with one hand, and apparently without an effort, the pale and sinking form of his almost expiring wife, and pointing with the finger of the other to her half dead features, demanded in a voice that sounded to the ears of the astonished statesman like the last great trumpet-call, that is to summon body and spirit to the judgment-seat, Knowest thou this woman?""1

mulcet, makes a due distribution of the still and animated parts. It is for want of this artful intertexture, and those necessary changes, that the whole of a book may be tedious, though all the parts are praised." — JOHNSON, Lives of the Poets, Vol. i, p. 219. 1 SCOTT, Kenilworth, Chap. xxxiv.

2. The element of climax. This shows itself in narration by increasing intensity of movement, or some accessory of dialogue, description, or comment, so graduated as to fasten attention on the importance or the distinctive point of the approaching event. Thus climax is a kind of concentration of interest on what is to come, by means of preliminary details.

EXAMPLE.. In the scene between Richard and Saladin, already cited, the following bit of dialogue, introduced after Richard has placed the iron bar ready for the blow of his sword, seems intended to lead up to a more vivid realization of the King's tremendous feat :

"The anxiety of De Vaux for his master's honor led him to whisper in English For the blessed Virgin's sake, beware what you attempt, my liege! Your full strength is not as yet returned — give no triumph to the infidel.'

"Peace, fool!' said Richard, standing firm on his ground, and casting a fierce glance around — ‘thinkest thou that I can fail in his presence?'" The similar preparation for Saladin's contrasted feat blends with the climax effect a suggestion of contrast :—

"The Soldan, indeed, presently said 'Something I would fain attempt — though, wherefore should the weak show their inferiority in presence of the strong? Yet, each land hath its own exercises, and this may be new to the Melech Ric.'- So saying, he took from the floor a cushion of silk and down, and placed it upright on one end. weapon, my brother, sever that cushion?' he said to King Richard. "No surely,' replied the King; 'no sword on earth, were it the Excalibar of King Arthur, can cut that which opposes no steady resistance to the blow.'

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Mark, then,' said Saladin,”1 etc. (see p. 523, above).

'Can thy

3. The element of surprise. Such preparation for an event as is implied in climax, while it is real and directive, is so to be managed as not to "give away the case" prematurely. There is an art of leading on the reader without letting him guess what is coming; while he is kept alert and in suspense, the real solution, when it comes, comes as a surprise. This is an aspect of contrast or antithesis.

1 SCOTT, The Talisman, Chap. xxvii.

EXAMPLE. Sir Gareth's combat with the four bandit knights of the fords, each fiercer and stronger than the one before, ends with a surprise which every circumstance has elaborately prepared to heighten. The last knight of the four is the most grewsome and dreaded of all; here is the description of him as he advances to battle :

"At once Sir Lancelot's charger fiercely neigh'd,

And Death's dark war-horse bounded forward with him.
Then those that did not blink the terror saw

That Death was cast to ground, and slowly rose.
But with one stroke Sir Gareth split the skull.
Half fell to right and half to left and lay.
Then with a stronger buffet he clove the helm
As thoroughly as the skull; and out from this
Issued the bright face of a blooming boy
Fresh as a flower new-born, and crying, 'Knight,
Slay me not: my three brethren bade me do it,
To make a horror all about the house,

And stay the world from Lady Lyonors.

They never dream'd the passes could be past.'" 1

4. The element of aposiopesis. Sometimes, when an important event has been so fully anticipated that it suggests itself, it is left to the reader's imagination to complete. This is especially the case when it is an event whose details would be disagreeable or distasteful or harrowing. But apart also from what it spares the reader, this silence throws the event from its repulsive realistic detail back upon its inner significance, on which the imagination can exercise itself unlimited.

EXAMPLES. - The following suggests the carrying out of the execution of a criminal, as observed by friends of the victim.

1 TENNYSON, Gareth and Lynette, ll. 1342-1350; 1365-1378.

Upon the cornice of a tower a tall staff was fixed. Their eyes were riveted on it. A few minutes after the hour had struck, something moved slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a black flag.

"Justice' was done, and Time, the Archsatirist, had had his joke out with Tess. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless; the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on." 1

The death of Sydney Carton, a self-sacrificed victim of the Terror in France, is suggested in a similar way, by aposiopesis. He is one of a company whose successive executions are numbered off one by one by the knitting women. Number Twenty-Two, a woman, precedes him : —

"She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him - is gone; the knitting women count Twenty-Two.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.'

"The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three. . . .

"They said of him about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic." 2

II. THE VEHICLE OF THE STORY.

Of any ordinary course of events there is, and must be, more in the story than the telling of the story. A plain recount of particulars one after another, in the manner and spirit of annals, leaves the narration bald, uncolored, unsignalized; and it is only events of commanding or sublime import that will bear such simple treatment. Most subjects of narration require some vehicle, which shall convey not the 1 HARDY, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, p. 455.

2 DICKENS, A Tale of Two Cities, Bk. iii, Chap. xv.

events alone but the shadings, the settings, the traits of human and moral interest which serve to make events stand out as worth the telling. This vehicle of the story, in its various aspects, is to narration what accessories are to description.

NOTE. Of narrative plot, as of other plans of discourse, the truth indeed holds that "the greater the occasion the more apt men are to be simple." 1 And in a supremely great series of events, as for instance the story of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis, the use of any but the simplest vehicle of language would be an impertinence; the events are so large as to scorn any outside help. But most stories must deal with the small occurrences of life, things which in themselves, without some deeper connotation, would have hardly more interest than entries in a diary. It is not in these alone, but in what the vehicle of the story brings along with them, that readers are interested; while as soon as the events themselves rise into greatness and importance, the accessory vehicle is naturally toned down, or kept plain and severe.

The vehicle of the story may be some medium of treatment, or may be devised from a subsidiary use of narration itself. Each of these calls here for notice.

I.

The Supporting Medium. With the annalistic recount of particulars, which of course always exists as the inner thread of the movement, there are inwoven various processes of treatment, which singly or in combination serve to give depth or zest or buoyancy or color. These constitute a medium through which the story, with its various involvements, gets itself told and interpreted. The chief of these are the working of character, the dialogue, and description.

1. The Characters of a Story. — Mere skill in the construction of plot, with its residual impression of ingenuity or mystery, stirs at best only a crude and transient interest. The reader's

1 HIGGINSON, Contemporaries, p. 315.