nally came. Gradually the old house and the English
landscape take hold of them; ancestral feelings rise to dominate them;
and they remain forever after in enforced habitation on the ancient
soil.

=Uses of the Weather.=--All that has been said thus far of setting in
general applies of course to one of the most interesting of its
elements,--the weather. In simple stories like the usual nursery tale,
the weather may be non-existent. Or it may exist mainly for a
decorative purpose, like the frequent golden oriental dawns of
Spenser's poem or the superb and colorful symphonies of sky and sea in
Pierre Loti's "Iceland Fisherman." It may be used as a utilitarian
adjunct to the action: at the end of "The Mill on the Floss," as we
have already noted, the rains descend and the flood comes merely for
the purpose of drowning Tom and Maggie. Or it may be employed to
illustrate a character: we are told of Clara Middleton, in "The
Egoist," that she possesses the "art of dressing to suit the season
and the sky"; and therefore the look of the atmosphere at any hour
helps to convey to us a sense of her appearance. Somewhat more
artistically, the weather may be planned in pre-established harmony
with the mood of the characters: this expedient is wonderfully used in
the wild and wind-swept tales of Fiona MacLeod. On the other hand, the
weather may stand in emotional contrast with the characters: the
Master of Ballantrae and Mr. Henry fight their duel on a night of
absolute stillness and stifling cold. Again, the weather may be used
to determine the action: in Mr. Kipling's early story called "False
Dawn," the blinding sandstorm causes Saumarez to propose to the wrong
girl. Or it may be employed as a controlling influence over character:
the tremendous storm toward the end of "Richard Feverel," in the
chapter entitled "Nature Speaks," determines the return of the hero to
his wife. In some cases, even, the weather itself may be the real hero
of the narrative: the great eruption of Vesuvius in "The Last Days of
Pompeii" dominates the termination of the story.

Although the weather is a subject upon everybody's tongue, there are
very few people who are capable of talking about it with intelligence
and art. Very few writers of fiction--and nearly all of them are
recent--have exhibited a mastery of the weather,--a mastery based at
once upon a detailed and accurate observation of natural phenomena and
a philosophic sense of the relation betwe