Lures of Life

nsformed into radiant, marvellous sentient things pulsing with life and passion, capture

lf a thing, peep and mutter within us; we try to hold them, but they are illusive as shadows on the wall. From the well-written words there leaps out something that has life and form and comeliness in it, and instantly

freely in sunlight and song. There are melodious, aromatic words that ring tunefully through corridors of the mind like a carillon of merry bells charming the heart with far-reaching joy. There are strong, fiery, tempestuous words that crash and rattle and reverberate like rolling th

romance and intoxicate with amorous delight. There are treacherous, lying words that distil murder in the air as th

ety, caressing words whose sweet sorcery holds us in their thrall, and that flow o

Unuttered we control them, uttered they control us." A man may have much wisdom packed into his capacious mind, but to unfold

, tersely, compactly, for words, like coins of the realm, are most esteemed when they contain large value in little space. The more briefly a thing is said, the more brilliantly it is put. T

you know more of the tale. Oh the dreariness of some solid reading I have done in my time!--very learned and logical dissertations, but dulness crowned it all; even the dry bones of scientific matter clogged with technicalities can be made

things, flushing them with a radiance all their own, and so awaking our mind to see new beauties, or old beauties made manifest in a new light which had been staled by the lethargy of custom. Miss Mitford's village was an ordinary Berkshire village mute in the annals of English history, but it was surprised into fame by the romantic pen of its lady historian. A splendid accident of literary achievement a

of the child when brought to birth. In whom the secret power lies dormant none know until the appointed hour reveals its budding graces. Inscrutable is the Divine favour; none can tell whence it cometh o

excellent acquirements combined cannot manufacture an artist. It needs the live coal

r little; whereas a strange, unaccountable talent working in obscure ways achieves the only results worth having. Here is a field in which neither birth nor condition is of any use, and wealth itself of exceeding lit

may be inaccurate. Why, then, are such works cherished and treasured? Because, with all their faults, they have power, they have feeling; they speak to the heart. The men who painted them were unlearned and ignorant, but they were artists to the finger-tips. There is a

rtion a man blunders through his designs, and puts no feeling of beauty or joy in the finished structure which is the work of his hands. Ruskin says: "It is just as rational an attempt to teach a young architect how to proportion truly and well by calculating for him the proportions of fine works as it would be to teach him to compare melodi

ou cannot explain by rule-of-three, nor dissect its individuality by the drastic deed of vivisection; you cannot slash the heart out of it with a critickin's reckless knife. You can unravel a piece of rare old Flemish tapestry, and destroy the beautiful design and harmonious colouring of it. In fact, you can reduce the tapestry to a heap of valueless threads of worsted fit only for burning; but style in literature you cannot pick to pieces. You cannot find the master-thread on which the secr

new and beautiful, but the excellence of the style is such that, with a sweetness never before felt, it leads us up a most pleasant and fertile slope, which we gradually ascend without perceiv

ee clearly; that is the wonder of it. It needs all the art and magic and persuasion of language to accomplish this difficult task. We see the subject presented as a picture when he writes with a graphic pen; we feel poignantly when his sharp and polished periods pierce like a rapier our und

r the night," or "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass," because in them, although they seem quite simple, the poet is trying to say infinitely more than he can pack into words. It is the effort to do something beyond the power of words; it is the effort to investigate the alluring Infinite with a mind closely fettered within the cramped and narrow finite that can only stretch forth a hand her

cut out and placed in my scrap-book; alas! to be buried in decent sepulchre, for I never see them now. Lord Burnham, the proprietor of the Daily Telegraph, put himself into these leaders, although other pens wrote them. They were his special hobby, and grew under his inspiration. His biographer tells us: "He had the rhetorical sense strongly developed. He liked full-blooded writing, and had a tenderness for big words and big adjectives, well-matched and in pairs. He revelled in the warmth and colour of certain words, and the more resonant they were, the better he liked them." Words carry not only meaning, but atmosphere with them. Sometimes a single word well chosen and well placed in a sentence gives feeli

look on a coloured print of it nearly every day of the week. The most brilliant thing on the canvas is the patch of scarlet in the dainty cap the child wears. That single dab of red seems to concentrate in itself the whole colour-scheme of the picture. It is the keynote. Now a single word in a se

erday hath

to dusty

r

path to the et

Pop

ia darting th

ose in aro

l

Nature, cea

languish

inimitabl

song-thrush, and

ose notes in th

s sailing into a man's head that is the right word. "The comely phrase, the well-born word," is a prince of high degree, and you may wait in his anteroom days before an audience is granted. The elect word does not sit on the tip of the tongue and drop into its place at call. You may search diligently and not find it, and presently of its own free will it comes to you, a happy thought flashed from the void where whispering spirits dwell. Gray's