powering thought, when we get to fix our minds on it, that we periodically use-I may say hold intercourse with-creatures who are as much strangers to us, as mysterious, as if they were fabulous unearthly beings, more powerful than man, and yet his slaves, which Eastern superstitions have invented. We have more real knowledge about the angels than about brutes; they have apparently pas sions, habits, and a certain accountableness, but all is mystery about them. We do not know whether they can sin or not, whether they are under punishment, whether they are to live after this life; we inflict very great sufferings on a portion of them, and they, in turn, every now and then, retaliate upon us, as if by a wonderful law. . . . Cast your thoughts abroad on the whole number of them, large and small, in vast forests, or in the water, or in the air, and then say whether the presence of such countless multitudes, so various in their natures, so strange and wild in their shapes, living on the earth without ascertainable object, is not as mysterious as anything Scripture says about the angels."

Now, does not the style of that passage perfectly represent the character of mind which conceived it, as well as the special meaning it conveys? Inferior styles express the purpose but conceal the man; Newman's expresses the purpose by revealing the This passage-and I could find scores which would suit my purpose as well, and some, though not so short and detachable, that would suit it betteris as luminous as the day; but that is not its special

man.

characteristic, for luminousness belongs to the ether, which is the same whether the atmosphere be present or absent, and Newman's style touches you with a visible thrill, just as the atmosphere transmits every vibration of sound. You are conscious of the thrill of the writer's spirit as he contemplates this strange world of countless animated beings with whom our spiritual bond is so slight; the sufferings we inflict, and the retaliations permitted in return; the blindness to spiritual marvels with which custom strikes us; the close analogy between the genii of Eastern superstition and the domestic animals who serve us so industriously with physical powers so much greater than our own; the strangeness and wildness of the innumerable forms which hover round us in forest, field, and flood; and yet with all those undercurrents of feeling, observe how large is the imaginative reach of the whole; how firmly the drift to make it easier to believe in angelic hostsis sustained; how steady is the subordination of the whole to the object of attenuating the difficulty of the spiritual mystery in which he desires men to believe. Once more, how tender is the style in the only sense in which we can properly attribute tenderness to style, its avoidance of every harsh or violent word, its shrinking aside from anything like overstatement! The lower animals have, he says, apparently passions, habits, and a certain accountableness." Evidently Dr. Newman could not have suggested, as Descartes did, that they are machines aping feelings without having them; he never

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doubts their sufferings; he could not, even by a shade, exaggerate the mystery he is delineating. Every touch shows that he wishes to delineate it as it is, and not to overcolor it by a single tint. Then how piercing to our dulness is that phrase, "It is indeed a very overpowering thought, when we get to fix our minds on it." We are not overpowered, he would say, only because we cannot or do not fix our minds on this wonderful intercourse of ours with intimates after a kind, of whose inner being we are yet entirely ignorant. And how reticent is the inference, how strictly it limits itself to its real object, to impress upon us how little we know even of the objects of sense, and how little reason there is in using our ignorance as the standard by which to measure the supersensual!

-And now to bring to a close what I have to say of Dr. Newman's style-though the subject grows upon one-let me quote one or two of the passages in which his style vibrates to the finest notes, and yet exhibits most powerfully the drift and undercurrent by which his mind is swayed. Perhaps he never expresses anything so powerfully as he expresses the deep pining for the rest of spiritual simplicity, for the peace which passes understanding, that underlies his nature. Take this from one of his Roman Catholic sermons: "Oh, long sought after, tardily found, the desire of the eyes, the joy of the heart, the truth after many shadows, the fulness after many foretastes, the home after many storms; come to

her, poor children, for she it is, and she alone, who can unfold to you the secret of your being, and the meaning of your destiny." Again, in the exquisite tale of martyrdom from which I have already quoted the account of the locusts, the destined martyr, whose thirst for God has been awakened by her intercourse with Christians, thus repels the Greek rhetorician who is trying to feed her on the husks of philosophic abstractions, as she expresses the yearnings of a heart weary of its desolation: "Oh that I could find Him!" Callista exclaimed passionately. "On the right hand and on the left I grope, but touch Him not. Why dost thou fight against me, why dost thou scare and perplex me, O First and only fair?"

In another of these poems Dr. Newman has referred to the sea described in the book of Revelation:

"A sea before

The throne is spread; its pure still glass
Pictures all earth-scenes as they pass.
We on its shore

Share in the bosom of our rest,

God's knowledge, and are blest."

It has always seemed to me that Newman's style succeeds, so far as a human form of expression can, in picturing the feelings of earth in a medium as clear, as liquid, and as tranquil, as sensitive alike to the minutest ripples and the most potent tidal waves of providential impulse, as the sea spread before the throne itself.

WALTER PATER.

1839

[This extract from Mr. Pater's essay on Style, contained in his volume of literary studies entitled "Appreciations," puts in a noteworthy way the importance of perfect language for art's sake. A passage of similar import has already been given, but the subject is treated here with more detail, and the sense for expression is so essential to intelligent literary enjoyment that a second presentation of it is not superfluous. The faculty for recognizing and feeling the values of words on both the intellectual and artistic sides—nice discrimination in meaning, and æsthetic tact in verbal tone and sentence rhythm, is one of the later and more acquired literary refinements, and more than repays attention and study. The only danger in this connection is the possibility both for writers and for readers of a cold and cramping fastidiousness. When too much stress is thrown on exquisite verbal effect, there is danger of a cautiously critical, if not self-conscious tone. Perhaps Mr. Pater's own writings have occasionally a studied look, as if they had been polished with one file too many. The accidents of genius are often felicitous beyond studious correctness. The unexpected word, which formal theory might not always indorse, is sometimes the poetry of verbal selection that study can never attain. But the ordinary danger is in neglecting such admonitions as these upon the importance of finish and precision, whether in what we compose, or in attending to the work of others. Not a little of the cultivated reader's gratification in reading, is his perception of the beauties of artistic workmanship.]