Balfour is essentially a sceptic. He looks out on life with a mingled scorn and pity scorn for its passionate strivings for the unattainable, pity for its meanness and squalor. He does not know the reading of the riddle, but he knows that all ends in failure and disillusion. Ever the rosy dawn of youth and hope fades away into the sadness of evening and the blackness of night, and out of that blackness comes no flash of revelation, no message of cheer.

The Worldly Hope men set their hearts upon
Turns Ashes -or it prospers; and anon

Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two- is gone.

Why meddle with the loom and its flying shuttle? We are the
warp and weft with which the great Weaver works His infinite de-
sign—that design which is beyond the focus of all mortal vision,
and in which the glory of Greece, the pomp of Rome, the ambition
of Carthage, seven times buried beneath the dust of the desert, are
but inscrutable passages of glowing color. All our schemes are
futile, for we do not know the end, and that which seems to us evil
may serve some ultimate good, and that which seems right may
pave the path to wrong. In this fantastic mockery of all human
effort the only attitude is the "wise passiveness" of the poet. Let
us accept the irrevocable fate unresistingly.

In a word, Drift. That is the political philosophy of Mr. Balfour.1

X. Analyze the method of treatment that the author uses in the following selections about King Edward VII and Mr. Thomas Hardy, and in the one just quoted about Mr. Balfour. Would the result in the reader's mind be as good, or better, if the author specified a larger number of qualities? Why? What feeling do you have as to the fairness of the three treatments? Does any one of the three seem to claim completeness? Which is most nearly complete?

Write a similar analysis, reducing to one or two main qualities or characteristics, the American Civil War, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Romantic Movement in Literature, the Celtic Spirit, the Puritan Spirit, Socialism, Culture.

Now, King Edward is, above everything else, a very human man. He is not deceived by the pomp and circumstance in the midst of which it has been his lot to live, for he has no illusions. He is eminently sane. He was cast for a part in the piece of life from his cradle, and he plays it industriously and thoroughly; but he has never lost the point of view of the plain man. He has much more in common with the President of a free State than with the

1 A. G. Gardiner: Prophets, Priests, and Kings. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.

King by Divine right. He is simply the chief citizen, primus inter pares, and the fact that he is chief by heredity and not by election does not qualify his views of the reality of the position. Unlike his nephew, he never associates the Almighty with his right to rule, though he associates Him with his rule. His common sense and his gift of humor save him from these exalted and antiquated assumptions. Nothing is more characteristic of this sensible attitude than his love for the French people and French institutions. No King by "Divine right" could be on speaking terms with a country which has swept the whole institution of Kingship on to the dust-heap.

And his saving grace of humor enables him to enjoy and poke fun at the folly of the tuft-hunter and the collector of Royal cherry stones. He laughingly inverts the folly. "You see that chair," he said in tones of awe to a guest entering his smoking room at Windsor. "That is the chair John Burns sat in." His Majesty has a genuine liking for "J. B." who, I have no doubt, delivered from that chair a copious digest of his Raper lecture, coupled with illuminating statistics on infantile mortality, some approving comments on the member for Battersea, and a little wholesome advice on the duties of a King. This liking for Mr. Burns is as characteristic of the King as his liking for France. He prefers plain, breezy men who admit him to the common humanities rather than those who remind him of his splendid isolation. He would have had no emotion of pride when Scott, who, with all his great qualities, was a deplorable tuft-hunter, solemnly put the wine glass that had touched the Royal lips into the tail pocket of his coat, but he would have immensely enjoyed the moment when he inadvertently sat on it.1

Thomas Hardy lives in the deepening shadow of the mystery of this unintelligible world. The journey that began with the bucolic joy of Under the Greenwood Tree has reached its close in the unmitigated misery of Jude the Obscure, accompanied by the mocking voices of those aerial spirits who pass their comments upon the futile struggle of the "Dynasts," as they march their armies to and fro across the mountains and rivers of that globe which the eye of the imagination sees whirling like a midge in space. Napoleon and the Powers! What are they but puppets in the hand of some passionless fate, loveless and hateless, whose purposes are beyond all human vision?

O Immanence, That reasonest not

In putting forth all things begot,

Thou buildest Thy house in space for what?

1 A. G. Gardiner: Prophets, Priests, and Kings. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.

And for answer comes the mocking voice of the Spirit Ironic

For one I cannot answer. But I know

"T is handsome of our Pities so to sing

The praises of the dreaming, dark, dumb Thing
That turns the handle of this idle Show.

Night has come down upon the outlook of the writer as it came down over the somber waste of Egdon Heath. There is not a cheerful feature left, not one glint of sunshine in the sad landscape of broken ambitions and squalor and hopeless strivings and triumphant misery. Labor and sorrow, a little laughter, disillusion and suffering — and after that, the dark. Not the dark that flees before the cheerful dawn, but the dark whose greatest benediction is eternal nothingness. Other men of genius, most men of genius, have had their periods of deep dejection in which only the mocking voice of the Spirit Ironic answered their passionate questionings. Shakespeare himself may be assumed to have passed through the valley of gloom in that tremendous period when he produced the great tragedies; but he came out of the shadow, and The Winter's Tale has the serenity and peace of a cloudless sunset. But the pilgrimage of Thomas Hardy has led us ever into the deeper shadow. The shades of the prison-house have closed around us and there is no return to the cheerful day. The journey we began with those jolly carol-singers under the greenwood tree has ended in the hopeless misery of Jude.1

XI. On what basis is the following analysis of the farmer's life made? Do you discover any overlapping of parts? Is the analysis so incomplete as to be of slight value? At what point can you draw the line between analysis and mere "remarks" about a subject?

Over and above the hardiness which the farm engenders, and of a far higher quality, is the moral courage it calls into play. Courage is the elemental virtue, for life has been and will forever be a fight. A farmer's life is one incessant fight. Think what he dares! He dares to try to control the face of this planet. In order to raise his crops he pits himself against the weather and the seasons; he forces the soil to his wishes; he wars against the plant world, the bacterial world. Is not that a fight, looked at philosophically, to make one stand aghast? After I had been on the farm seven years, the tremendousness of the fight that my fellow farmers were waging disclosed itself to me with a force no figure

1 A. G. Gardiner: Prophets, Priests, and Kings. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.

of speech can convey. Until one can be brought to some realization of this aspect of the farmer's life, he has no adequate grounds for comprehending the discipline and development which is the very nature of the case that life must receive. I often contrast the life of the clerk at his books, or the mechanic at his bench, or the professional man at his desk, with the lot of the farmer. The dangers and uncertainties they confront seem to me extraordinarily mild compared with the risk the farmer runs. That the former will be paid for their work is almost certain; it is extremely uncertain whether the farmer will be paid for his. He must dare to lose at every turn; scarcely a week passes in which he does not lose, sometimes heavily, sometimes considerably. Those moments in a battle when it seems as if every plan had gone to smash, which so test the fortitude of a general, are moments which a farmer experiences more frequently and more strenuously than men in most occupations. If he sticks to his task successfully his capacity for courage must grow to meet the demands; if he will not stick, he is sifted out by force of circumstance, leaving the stronger type of man to hold the farm.1

Analyze the life of the iron-worker, the country doctor, the headnurse of a city hospital, the college professor, the private detective. XII. Would you classify the following selection as formal or informal classification or partition?

Write a similar treatment of fuel power, moral power, physical strength, intellectual power.

Wherever rain falls streams will form, the water of which represents the concentrated drainage of all the land sloping toward that particular valley at the bottom of which the stream flows. This stream flow consists of the rainfall over the whole watershed less the amount absorbed by the earth or evaporated from the surface, and every such stream is a potential source of power. The possible water-power of a country or district is, therefore, primarily dependent on rainfall, but also, of course, on absorption and surface evaporation. In places where the land is approximately flat, the tendency to concentrate rainfall into streams would be small, as the water would tend to lie rather in swampy low pools, or form innumerable tiny, slowly moving brooks. On the contrary, if the country were of a rolling or mountainous character, there would be two important differences introduced. First, water would concentrate in a few larger and faster-moving streams, the water of which would represent the collection from perhaps thousands of square miles; and secondly, it would be constantly falling from higher to lower levels on its way to the sea. While, therefore, all

1 Arthur M. Judy: From the Study to the Farm. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company.

streams are potential or possible sources of power, and waterpower might seem to be available all over the earth, yet, as a matter of fact, only those streams that are large enough or in which the fall of level is great enough, are really worth while to develop; and only in these districts where the rainfall is great enough and the earth not too flat or too absorbent, or the air too dry, may any streams of useful character at all be expected. The power represented by all the water of a stream, and its entire fall from the source to the sea, is likewise only partly available. No one would think of trying to carry water in pipes from the source of a stream a thousand miles to its mouth for the sake of running some waterwheels.1

XIII. For what kind of reader do you judge that the following partition of the orchestra was written? Is the partition complete? What is the basis on which it is made? How does it differ from an appreciative criticism of the orchestra as a musical instrument? (See chapter on Criticism.)

Make a similar partition of the brass band, the feudal system, the United States Government, the United States Army, the Hague Conference, the pipe organ, the printing press, a canal lock, a Greek drama, a large modern circus, mathematics, etc.

The modern orchestra is the result of a long development, which it would not be profitable to trace in this book. It is a body of instruments, selected with a view to their ability to perform the most complex music. It will be readily understood that such an instrumental body must possess a wide range of timbres, a great compass, extensive gradations of force, the greatest flexibility, and a solid sonority which can be maintained from the finest pianissimo to the heaviest forte. Of course the preservation of some of these qualities, such as flexibility and solidity, depend largely upon the skill of the composer, but they are all inherent in the orchestra. They are gained by the use of three classes of instruments, grouped under the general heads of wood, brass, and strings, which have special tone-colors and individuality when heard in their distinct groups, but which combine admirably in the ensemble.

It is the custom to name the three groups in the order given because, for the sake of convenience, composers place the flute parts at the top of the page of the score where the wide margin gives room for their high notes. The other wood-wind instruments follow the flutes, so as to keep the wood-choir together. The brass is placed under the wood because its members are so often com

1 Charles E. Lucke: Power. By courtesy of the publishers, the Columbia University Press.