plains of Marathon, in Greece, where 10,000 Athenians defeated a mighty Persian host; the still more famous Thermopylae, of which the English poet Byron writes A king sat on the rocky brow

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships by thousands lay below,

And men in nations,—all were his.
He counted them at break of day,

And when the sun set, where were they?"

103. We now proceed to give a short account of the sources of the pleasures of the imagination, so far as these relate

to literature. Of the five senses that have been given to man, three, taste, smell, and touch,-do not, strictly speaking, relate to the intellect, but may be considered as bodily, or corporeal, senses. The two intellectual senses are sight and hearing. The impressions of the former are the more striking, and the enjoyment they yield is more lasting and more intense. The blind, therefore, lose much more of the pleasures of the imagination than the deaf. Most of the fine arts,-painting, sculpture, architecture, &c,- appeal exclusively to the eye; while music, poetry, and rhetoric address themselves to the ear. The different characteristics which an object must possess to excite the imagination are known as the Novel, the Wonderful, the Picturesque, the Sublime, and the Beautiful. Of these the last two are by far the most fruitful sources of pleasure.

THE NOVEL.

104. The Novel is an important source of pleasure, producing a lively and instantaneous effect on the imagination.

An object whose only merit is its being uncommon or new is capable of giving a quick and pleasing impulse to the mind; while objects long familiar, however attractive, are apt to be passed over with indifference. The emotion produced by Novelty is of a livelier and more acute nature than that excited by Beauty: but is proportionately shorter in its continuance. If there is no other charm to attract us, that of novelty necessarily soon wears off. The desire to see and hear what is new is universal, and is known as Curiosity. No emotion of the mind is stronger or more general. Conversation is never more interesting than when it turns on strange objects and extraordinary events. Men tear themselves from their families in search of things rare and new, and novelty converts into pleasures the fatigues and even the dangers of travelling. But, by reason of its nature, novelty cannot for any length of time engross our attention; and hence curiosity is the most changeable of all our affections. Four different degrees of Novelty have been distinguished;

(a). The lowest degree is found in objects seen a second

time after a long interval, either in time or in space. Thus, a person with whom we have been intimate, returning from abroad after a long interval, appears almost like a new acquaintance; while a friend, after a short absence in a very distant foreign country, has the same air of novelty as if he had returned after a longer interval from a place nearer home. So, we may often take up and read with pleasure a book or a passage that we have perused in days gone by. In this case the pleasure may be increased by associations connecting the book with the persons with whom, or with the place in which, we were when we first

read it.

(b). The next degree of novelty belongs to objects respecting which we have had some previous information. This is the kind of pleasure felt by one who visits for the first time some foreign country of which he has read accounts more or less correct; or by a student who sees a stage representation of some drama of which his teacher has previously given him a brief outline.

(c). A new object that bears some distant resemblance to one already known is an instance of the third degree of novelty. To a provincial Japanese, for instance, coming, for the first time, to Tokiyo or one of the open ports, the sight of a European would be a novelty of this degree, because the points of difference between the foreigner and the Japanese race are sufficiently marked to excite curiosity.

(d). The highest degree of novelty is that which characterizes objects entirely unknown and bearing no analogy to any with which we are acquainted. Such must have been the feeling excited in the minds of the West Indian aborigines by the sight of Columbus, his ships, his guns, and his cavalry. Such was the degree of novelty of the first locomotive engine brought to Japan; such is the feeling caused to children by the perusal of fairy tales like those of Hans Andersen or the famous Arabian Nights' Entertainment. Think of the high degree of novelty which those South American Indians would be capable of feeling whom Macaulay describes as

"Savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, who wielded no better weapons than

those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster, half man half beast, who took a harquebusier for a sorcerer able to scatter the thunder and lightning of the skies."

105.

THE WONDERFUL.

The Wonderful consists chiefly in the production of unexpected trains of thought. The difference between. the Novel and the Wonderful is readily illustrated. A man who has never seen an elephant goes to the zoological gardens to see one; the sight is novel and pleasing, but not wonderful, for it was fully expected. A Hindoo visiting England is taken to the zoological gardens without having had the nature of the place explained to him: there he sees an elephant: the sight is not novel, for he is accustomed to the animal; it is wonderful, however, because totally unexpected,—-and is pleasing in proportion. The following verses afford an example of the Wonderful combined with Wit;

"Old man! Old man! For whom digg'st thou this grave?'

I asked, as I walked along;

For I saw, in the heart of London streets,

A dark and busy throng.

'Twas a strange wild deed! but a wilder wish

Of the parted soul, to lie

'Midst the troubled numbers of living men,

Who would pass him idly by!

So I said, 'Old man, for whom digg'st thou this grave,

In the heart of London town?"

And the deep-toned voice of the digger replied:'We're laying a gas-pipe down!'"

THE PICTURESQUE.

106. The Picturesque is by some regarded simply as a variation of the Beautiful, from which, however, it seems to be distinguished by a certain ruggedness of appearance. The following lines from Tennyson are a good example of a picturesque description;

Then rode Geraint into the castle court,

His charger trampling many a prickly star

Of sprouted thistles on the broken stones.
He looked, and saw that all was ruinous.
Here stood a shattered archway plumed with fern;
And here had fallen a great part of a tower,
Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff,
And, like a crag, was gay with wilding flowers:
And, high above, a piece of turret stair,
Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound
Bare to the sun; and monstrous ivy-stems
Clasped the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms,
And sucked the joining of the stones, and looked
A knot, beneath, of snakes,-aloft, a grove."

THE SUBLIME.

107. The term Sublimity, for which Grandeur is by some used as an equivalent, is applied to great and noble objects which produce a sort of mental elevation and expansion. The emotion, though pleasing, is of a serious character,