RHETORIC AND BELLES-LETTRES. 



being can escape from the effects of the various 

 influences now enumerated : they press most 

 intimately upon the whole being ; and one person 

 cannot enter into the mind and feelings of 

 another in a different position, without conceiving 

 all of them exactly as they existed. While they 

 remain uncertain and unfelt, all subsequent de- 

 scription of spectacle, motion, sound, and life is 

 mere fancy-work or aerial pictures, which a second 

 party has no personal relation to, no human sym- 

 pathy with, no feeling of bodily presence among. 



With regard to description in general, as appli- 

 cable to all cases where a complex object or scene 

 has to be represented to the view, the leading 

 maxim, as already hinted at, is to combine a type 

 of the whole with an enumeration of the parts. 

 Some comprehensive designation that may spread 

 out the main features of the object is indispen- 

 sable to the description ; and within this the 

 details may be arranged in proper form and order. 

 The following is a very simple instance from 

 Milton, which seems as if it could not have been 

 stated otherwise than he has done ; but it shews 

 itself in carrying into complicated cases the 

 method that appears self-evident in easy cases. 

 The words in italics mark the comprehensive 

 designation or type, the rest of the description 

 giving the details : 



' They plucked the seated kills, with all their load 

 Rocks, waters, woods and by the shaggy tops 

 Up-lifting, bore them in their hands.' 



Carlyle's description of the town and neigh- 

 bourhood of Dunbar, the scene of Cromwell's 

 decisive victory over the Scotch, is rendered vivid 

 and conceivable, in consequence of his always 

 introducing particulars and details by terms and 

 epithets that are at once comprehensive and pic- 

 turesque : 



'The small town of Dunbar stands high and 

 windy, looking down over its herring-boats, over its 

 grim old castle, now much honeycombed, on one 

 of those projecting rock-promontories with which 

 that shore of the Firth of Forth is niched and 

 Vandyked as far as the eye can reach. A beautiful 

 sea ; good land too, now that the plougher under- 

 stands his trade ; a grim niched barrier of whin- 

 stone sheltering it from the chafings and tumblings 

 of the big blue German Ocean. Seaward, St 

 Abb's Head, of whin stone, bounds your horizon 

 to the east, not very far off ; west, close by, is the 

 deep bay and fishy little village of Belhaven : the 

 gloomy Bass and other rock-islets; and further, 

 the hills of Fife, and foreshadows of the High- 

 lands, are visible as you look seaward. From the 

 bottom of Belhaven Bay to that of the next sea- 

 bight St Abb's-ward, the town and its environs 

 form a peninsula. Along the base of which penin- 

 sula, " not much above a mile and a half from sea 

 to sea," Oliver Cromwell's army, on Monday, 2d of 

 September 1650, stands ranked, with its tents and 

 town behind it, in very forlorn circumstances. 



' Landward, as you look from the town of Dun- 

 bar, there rises, some short mile off, a dusky con- 

 tinent of barren heath hills; the Lammermoor, 

 where only mountain sheep can be at home. The 

 crossing of which by any of its boggy passes and 

 brawling stream-courses, no army, hardly a soli- 

 tary Scotch packman, could attempt in such 

 weather. To the edge of these Lammermoor 



heights David Leslie has betaken himself; lies 

 now along the utmost spur of them, a long hill of 

 considerable height There lies he since Sunday 

 night, in the top and slope of this Doon Hill, with 

 the impassable heath continents behind him ; em- 

 braces, as with outspread tiger-claws, the base-line 

 of Oliver's Dunbar peninsula! 



Of Historical Composition. 



Narration is, in the simplest class of cases, an 

 easier effort than description ; inasmuch as we 

 have merely to enumerate the objects or events 

 one after another as they rise to the view. But 

 since, in the greater number of instances where 

 narration is of any importance, the successive 

 events present individually a wide and complex 

 surface, there is demanded for each an appropriate 

 description ; and a succession of descriptions will 

 thus make up the narrative. 



This is particularly true of historical narration, 

 or the detail of the larger transactions of masses 

 of men on the face of the globe. History is prop- 

 erly a compound of narration and description : 

 it has to express the mighty march of nations 

 through the ages of time. 



There is, however, this peculiarity in the case, 

 that the scene of action remains the same in all 

 its larger features. The surface of the earth, the 

 mountains, valleys, plains, and rivers, where men 

 live and act, continue the same ; and they have, 

 therefore, to be made known once for all in the 

 case of each separate people that remain attached 

 to one territory. Although this diminishes the 

 difficulty of the historian, yet there is required 

 considerable exertion on his part to make an 

 ordinary reader conceive with perfect clearness 

 the features of a foreign country. The following 

 are a few of the requisites of historical composi- 

 tion, considered in its purest form ; or with as 

 little reference as possible to the expositions of 

 doctrines and opinions, and the criticisms of 

 character and conduct, that mix so largely in the 

 greater number of historical works : 



I. It is essential that the ground where the 

 transactions have occurred should be distinctly 

 pictured forth at the outset, and maintained 

 steadily in view by the subsequent references ; in 

 other words, the geography should be fully com- 

 prehended by the reader before commencing the 

 history. There will, of course, be certain portions 

 of the geography more pertinent to the narrative 

 than others, and these will naturally be the most 

 insisted on. Thus, if the country subsists largely 

 upon its mining operations, the mines must be 

 prominently described in the preliminary survey. 

 With regard to geographical description in 

 general, in which our school-books err deplorably, 

 the principles of description already laid down 

 must be faithfully observed. We must start with 

 a comprehensive sketch of the surface, by st.v 

 the great outlines and ihe prominent central 

 points, and branch out from these in every direc- 

 tion, in a regular order, and with constant refer- 

 ence to the main features. The expanded sfaet 

 occupied by the country should be steadily main- 

 tained in the view, there being a constant tend- 

 ency in the uncultivated mind to allow the terri- 

 torial expanse to collapse into a jumble of confused 

 particulars, and thus destroy the chief grandeur of 

 the scene. The description of a country by a bare 

 catalogue of its coasts, mountains, rivers, islands, 



