icture be? Then compare your effort with Shelley's
famous

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun!

Another step, and we come to a region no longer of outward description,
but of thought, of feeling, of delicate fancy, of soaring imagination.

I suppose thousands upon thousands of persons possessed of what our
great-grandfathers used to call "sensibility," have felt at eventide,
when alone in certain spots, a kind of subduing awe, as if some great
spirit-existence pervading all nature were laying a solemn hush upon
the world. In various degrees one here and one there can express that
feeling, but how many can express it as simply and yet effectually as
Wordsworth does:--

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder--everlastingly!

* * * * *

To express and body forth: there is room for the manifestation of this
prime literary gift in all sort of subjects. It may be shown in a fable
of AEsop, in _Robinson Crusoe_, in a children's story, in Mark Twain's
boyish experiences on the Mississippi, in a Barrack-room Ballad of
Rudyard Kipling, in Thackeray's _Esmond_, in Shelley's _Ode to a
Skylark_, in either a comedy of Shakespeare or his _Hamlet_, in a sonnet
of Dante's _Vita Nuova_ or in his _Inferno_. AEsop's communication of his
point of view is final. So is Defoe's communication of mental pictures.
So is Mark Twain's of that Mississippi pilotage. So is Kipling's in his
_Drums of the Fore and Aft_, or his _Mandalay_. These men are all
admirable literary artists in their own domains. Each fulfils all that
is demanded of his art. If we could keep this fact clearly before us,
our judgments of writers might be more discriminating. Do we think
Kipling possessed of an extraordinary degree of the literary gift? Who
could think otherwise, seeing that he can effect exactly what he sets
out to effect by means of words? His scenes and h