and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the wind and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede; and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds comes many a waiting plant — first, a hardy carex with arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow warmer, and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed places; and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons, violets, honeyworts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to the new gardens, kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple flowers, the arctic willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the heathy bryanthus and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects now enrich the air; frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the ousel, which is the first bird to visit the glacier lake, as the sedge is the first of plants.

So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly lovable from century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy pines, and the hemlock spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and embowered. But while its shores are being enriched, the soil-beds creep out with incessant growth, contracting its area while the lighter mud-particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow constantly shallower, until at length the last remnant of the lake vanishes, closed forever in ripe and natural old age.1

It might seem at first that this passage is narrative, but a little consideration will show that the writer's ultimate purpose is not to tell a story about a mountainlake; rather it is to elucidate the geologic process of lake formation, and for this elucidation he chooses the narrative form for its greater dramatic effect. That is, he uses narrative means for the better accomplishment of an

1 From The Mountains of California, by John Muir. By permission of The Century Co.

expository end. So with all passages of this character, in which the question may arise, Is it narration (expository) or exposition (narrative)? we have but to determine the ultimate purpose of the composition in question.

In determining this essential point it is sometimes of assistance to discover whether the passage under consideration deals with particular, individual events, of value in and for themselves, or whether they are general, typical of the entire class to which they belong. For example, contrast the following paragraph from Macaulay's History of England with that already cited from Muir:

But the king suffered the auspicious moment to pass away; and it never returned. In August, 1643, he sate down before the city of Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhabitants and by the garrison, with a determination such as had not, since the commencement of the war, been shown by the adherents of the Parliament. The emulation of London was excited. The train-bands of the City volunteered to march wherever their forces might be required. A great force was speedily collected, and began to move westward. The siege of Gloucester was raised. The Royalists in every part of the kingdom were disheartened: the spirit of the Parliamentary party revived; and the apostate Lords, who had lately fled from Westminster to Oxford, hastened back from Oxford to Westminster.

As forms of composition these two passages are wholly unlike. Each is constructed, indeed, on the narrative principle; in each we have the orderly recital of the details that constitute a transaction, the one "The life-story of a mountain lake," the other "The siege of Gloucester," but in the selection from Macaulay the details are specific and particular in that they apply to an episode of the Civil War, to the siege of a certain city in 1643, not to wars and sieges in general; whereas the

passage from Muir, although chronological in arrangement, refers to a mountain lake in general, and is applicable to any and all mountain lakes of a certain character. The purpose of the paragraph is to explain the term "mountain lake," to elucidate the process of formation. In view, then, of the fact that the passage from Macaulay concerns itself with a specific event, that its main purpose is not to explain, not to interpret the subject into more intelligible terms, but rather to chronicle the details that constitute the event in question, one does not hesitate to class it as narration. And as the passage from Muir, although seemingly specific in application, is in reality general; as, although it seems to concern itself with the details of an occurrence, it in fact sets forth a process true of each member of a class; as it is merely a rather dramatic method of explanation, one does not hesitate to call it exposition. In the end, the question of ultimate purpose determines the rhetorical classification.

II. Narration and Argumentation

Between narration and argumentation there is less likelihood of confusion than between narration and exposition. Argument has to do with demonstrating the truth or falsity of a given proposition, and between this process and the orderly arrangement of the temporal details that constitute an event there is little in common. Yet it is clear that narration will often serve as an effective method of establishing the premises that lead to a conclusion. To show the guilt of an accused person may be necessary to narrate the incidents upon which the charge is based; to demonstrate the futility of a proposed act of legislation the citation of the instances in which similar legislation has in the past proved ineffect

it

ive may furnish the surest kind of evidence. In all such cases, however, one will do well to bear in mind that the ultimate purpose of the forensic or of the appeal is to establish the proposition at issue, and that, in consequence, although the means may be narrative in character, the end is argumentative.

Illustrations of this narrative form for argumentative ends abound in forensic literature. For example, in his famous Defence of Lord Gordon Lord Erskine follows in detail the actions of John Hay from one day to another during the disturbances in London, chronicling incident after incident, but all for the purpose of proving that the witness was a popish spy, that his statements were thoroughly self-contradictory, that his testimony should be rejected. Added effect results from the narrative presentation, but the end in view is conviction by means of refutation; in other words, it is ultimately argumentative.

III. Narration and Description

Exposition and argumentation have been grouped together as constituting "logical composition" on the ground that each appeals to the laws of thought rather than to the aesthetic or appreciative sense. Description, on the other hand, has with narration been termed "the literature of feeling," in that "personal experience of individual people is the subject matter of all this kind of writing." It does not matter whether the writer is narrating his own experiences or spinning a yarn of adventure in search of treasure hidden in some imaginary island in the Spanish Main; whether he is picturing the house of his neighbor across the way or essaying to phrase in words his vision of some Castle Perilous, some

1 Forms of Prose Literature: Gardiner, p. 106.

chamber-tower in Astolat; — in any case, he finds his material in the constant stream of consciousness that we call experience.2 But for another reason, too, narration comes into closer relations with description than with the other literary forms. Narration, presenting the various details of an event, gains in effectiveness if these details can be projected against suitable background. Such background description provides, and, in consequence, is in almost constant attendance upon narration. It is true, we can find examples of pure description, of description drawn solely for the sake of æsthetic delight in a picture presented with no thought of rendering more effective an expository, an argumentative, or a narrative idea. The following lines present a good instance of pure description, -a picture and nothing else, for the selection is complete in itself:

THE SWEAT SHOP

Low ceilings, mildewed with the reeking damp,
The walls hung thick with ill-assorted clothes;
Small window-panes with frames that vex and cramp,
Small, sputtering gas-lights, bracketed in rows.
The noisy whirr of wheels and leathern bands
That turn incessantly. The snap of shears
Wielded by large, rough-knuckled, grimy hands,
And through the door, to straining, eager ears,
The hum of traffic and the huckster's cry

And all about, packed almost back to back,
Bent forms and brows, and pallid lips that sigh
From wretched torture of the daily rack.

LURANA W. SHELDON in the N. Y. Times.

Brander Matthews's Vignettes of Manhattan are, as the title implies, primarily descriptive, and the narrative thread that runs through each is not essential. But liter

2 For a full consideration of this topic see Gardiner's Forms of Prose Literature, pp. 105-113.