the spiritual
world. It may be a single flower, a landscape, or a stellar system. The
purpose of description is to enable the reader to reproduce the scene,
object, or experience in his own imagination. In general there are two
kinds of description,--the objective and the subjective; but the laws of
both are the same. There must be a judicious selection and grouping of
the details, and their number must be so restricted as not to produce
confusion.

Objective description portrays objects as they exist in the external
world. It points out in succession their distinguishing features. Thus
we read in Wordsworth's "A Night Piece,"--

"The traveller looks up--the clouds are split
Asunder--and above his head he sees
The clear moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives; how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;--still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds."

Subjective description notes the effects produced by an external object
or scene on the mind and heart. The eye of the writer is turned inward
rather than outward; he brings before us the thoughts, feelings,
fancies that are started within his soul. Thus Browning speaks of music
in his early poem, "Pauline":

"For music (which is earnest of a heaven,
Seeing we know emotions strange by it,
Not else to be revealed) is as a voice,
A low voice calling fancy, as a friend,
To the green woods in the gay summer time;
And she fills all the way with dancing shapes
Which have made painters pale, and they go on,
While stars look at them and winds call to them,
As they leave life's path for the twilight world
Where the dead gather."

(2) _Narration_ is a recital of incidents or events in an orderly
sequence. It is closely related to description, with which it is
frequently joined in the same paragraph. The one is used to aid or
supplement the other. Like description, narration has its place in
nearly every form of composition; and in history, fiction, and epic
poetry it constitutes, perhaps, the body of discourse. The incidents
narrated should be selected according to their interest and importance;