be for a hunt, as an act in some comical story, to go for a physician, to escape danger, to save life, or to take a ride for pleasure. It may also be seen and felt as one act among thousands in preparation for the battle of Waterloo,-about this one act being gathered the situation and atmosphere of the whole event. Vocal expression can be still more definite. The mounting may be simply on the part of an individual, or it may be the whole army. Such variations can be applied to every phrase and sentence in both extracts.

From these illustrations it may be seen that feeling depends upon situation; that with every change of situation there is a change in emotion; and, in fact, that imaginative conception of a situation is the source of true emotion.

Feeling also results from the vivid realization of relations or associations. Here, for example, is a little coat. To the ordinary observer it is a mere rag; but the mother folds it away with tears, for it recalls a little form with the sunshine and tenderness, the joys and hopes, of other days. Memory thus plays an important part in awakening feeling; but the imagination uses the material furnished by memory and creates a background, gives relations and associations. Thus the most familiar objects or events are often so related or associated by the imagination as to awaken exalted emotion.

Here are a few scraps of cloth sewed together floating upon the breeze from the mast of a ship; but for this men will give their lives: it is the flag of their country.

Notice how the poet makes the season, the cold, leafless trees and the stillness, all co-operate to awaken feeling for the bird

A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her Love

Upon a wintry bough;

The frozen wind crept on above,

The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare,

No flower upon the ground,

And little motion in the air

Except the mill-wheel's sound.

?

Shelley.

One of the most important functions of imagination is to prevent the mind from forming a mere literal conception of any object or scene, and to connect it with deeper and more significant relations to life. Blood to the outer eye awakens horror; the imagination of a Shakespeare uses it so as to become the means of stimulating exalted feeling:

THROUGH this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd;
And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Cæsar follow'd it,
As rushing out of doors, to be resolv'd
If Brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no.

This passage is considered one of the most imaginative in the English language. Prose explanations of it only spoil it. By a simple, natural process, home-like images a drawn forth from every heart, and the observer does not see mere blood, but beholds a living embodiment of the love of Cæsar for Brutus.

Imagination lifts the commonplace into the realm of interest; it surrounds the smallest Ject with the atmosphere of infinity. It makes the most trivial event throb with the spirit of ages, and the life of race thrill in an individua. soul.

We are epted to dwell merely upon the literal and commonplace. drudge in any profession is one who works without imagination. Imagination exalts and ennobles all life; it awakens the mind to feel what will be in what is, - to see the ideal in the actual; it penetrates beneath the surface of mere sense-perception, and discovers hidden relations of the life which throbs at the heart of the universe, and thus awakens a thrill of feeling in the dullest breast.

The imagination also brings the individual mind into sympathy with the race. It creates the possibility of that true altruism by which each soul can appreciate the point of view of another soul, of another race or age. It enables man to realize that which can only be suggested or vaguely hinted at in language. It gives power to create art, and to read and feel the message of the art of every age.

Again, imagination arouses feeling by vividly conceiving ideas as present realities; by it the distant is made near, the past made

present. The world of ideas becomes a living world, and every object is conceived in a natural, a living scene. "It is by means of ideal presence, says Lord Kames, "that our passions are excited; and till words produce that charm, they avail nothing; even real events entitled to our belief must be conceived present and passing in our sight, before they can move us. And this theory serves to explain several phenomena otherwise unaccountable. A misfortune happening to a stranger makes a less impression than one happening to a man we know, even where we are in no way interested in him; our acquaintance with this man, however slight, aids the conception of his suffering in our presence. Even genuine history has no command over our passions but by ideal presence only. Without it the finest speaker or writer would in vain attempt to move any passion; our sympathy would be confined to objects that are really present; and language would lose entirely its signal power of making us sympathize with beings removed at the greatest distance of time as well as of place."

These facts indicate that imagination and feeling are closely connected. Imagination has been defined as "the mind of passion, the thinking of the heart." Imagination," says Professor Shairp, seems to be a power intermediate between intellect and emotion, looking towards both, and partaking of the nature of both. In its highest form, it would seem to be based on 'moral intensity.' The emotional and the intellectual in it act and react on each other, deep emotion kindling imagination, and expressing itself in imaginative form, while imaginative insight kindles and deepens emotion. Whenever the soul comes vividly in contact with any fact, truth, or existence; whenever it realizes and takes them home to itself with more than common intensity, out of that meeting of the soul and its object there arises a thrill of joy, a glow of feeling. Emotion, then, from first to last, inseparably attends the exercise of imagination, pre-eminently in him who creates, in a lesser degree in those who enjoy his creations."

All this applies with double force to speaking, or to any form of vocal expression. It is the imagination which conceives an

idea in its relation to others, and supplies the right background; which brings ideas or objects into sympathetic association with the human mind, and makes them live and act; it is the only faculty that can create ideal presence. Hence imagination is the chief cause of feeling in all forms of art, but especially in speaking.

:

It is only an unimaginative speaker who says he cannot read a poem or story because he never saw the place" or experienced the emotion. Such a person entirely misunderstands the nature of feeling. Every scene in history, sacred or profane, is imaginary. Hardly a scene in the Bible can be definitely located; and even if the few scraggy trees called Gethsemane mark the real spot, what help are they to feeling? None. The imagination must create a Capernaum and a Calvary. In fact, without imagination, noble emotion is impossible. Besides, emotion arises from an imaginative situation more than from a literal scene or object. When Mark Antony steps down from the rostrum, Shakespeare does not make him try to awaken feeling by showing Cæsar's body to the Roman populace. He displays at first only the mantle, and appeals to their memory and imagination, not to their eyes. He even carries them back to a great historical battle which was a part of their national pride. Even then he does not show them the body, but makes them feel Cæsar's death by showing the thrusts of the daggers through his mantle. He appeals to the imagination and not to the eye to awaken emotion. People have been so stunned, so shocked, by the sight of a dead body — of a father or a mother or a child that no tear could be shed; but afterward the sight of a vacant chair, or a pair of little shoes, has wrung the heart and caused a flood of tears. The deepest passion is awakened by suggestion, because suggestion is associated with imagination. The higher the thought, the deeper the feeling, the more impossible it is for expression to be literal. "The art of expression," says Goethe, "is the art of intimation.”

Without imagination there can be no genuineness in art. It is only by imagination that a speaker can make real the scenes of other days; it is only by imagination that we identify ourselves

with the sorrows of our kind. Sympathy is insight, and insight is sympathy. The unimaginative person is unsympathetic and lacks feeling. He can sympathize only with experiences he has had himself. Hence, he measures all by himself; he is selfish, unable to enter into sympathy with people of other ages, other lands, or other relations of life.

WEEP no more, lady, weep no more, thy sorrow is in vain ;

For violets pluck'd, the sweetest showers will ne'er make grow again. Beaumont and Fletcher.

In the first of these lines there is an endeavor to awaken sympathy; but it is in the delicate suggestion in the next line, by means of a specific imaginative picture, that the deeper tenderness of the heart is touched.

It was a lovely sight to see
The lady Christabel, when she
Was praying at the old oak-tree:
Amid the jagged shadows
Of mossy leafless boughs,
Kneeling in the moonlight

To make her gentle vows;
Her slender palms together press'd,
Heaving sometimes on her breast;
Her face resigned to bliss or bale

Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!
And both blue eyes more bright than clear,
Each about to have a tear.

Coleridge.

Exercises in situation and vision are very important, because they develop imagination and dramatic instinct. They impart a sense of the value of situation and surroundings to truth and emotion. They develop also that emotional response to ideas which lies at the foundation of all noble expression. Such exercises tend to correct monotony, and that vague neutrality and cold artificiality which are so common. When the imagination is brought to bear upon a scene, it creates vital interest; it makes everything live; it secures precision and definiteness of emotion, truthfulness, and variation of expression.