n torments. Sulphur
fires blazed in the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples screamed
and bellowed, for the gods were inattentive in those days. There was a
service in the great Mahomedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the
minarets was almost unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of
the dead, and once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was
calling for its return. In the gray dawn they saw the dead borne
out through the city gates, each litter with its own little knot of
mourners. Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered."

An emotional contrast of this nature between the mood of the
characters and the mood of the setting may be pushed to the point
of irony. In a story by Alphonse Daudet, entitled "The Elixir of the
Reverend Father Gaucher," a certain monastery is saved from financial
ruin by the sale of a cordial which Father Gaucher has invented and
distilled. But the necessity of sampling the cordial frequently during
the process of manufacturing it leads the reverend father eventually
to become an habitual drunkard. And toward the end of the story an
ironic contrast is drawn between the solemn monastery, murmurous with
chants and prayers, and Father Gaucher in his distillery hilariously
singing a ribald drinking-song.

The uses of setting that have been thus far considered have been
artistic rather than philosophical in nature; but very recent writers
have grown to use the element not only for the sake of illustrating
character and action but also for the sake of determining them.
The sociologists of the nineteenth century have come to regard
circumstance as a prime motive for action, and environment as a
prime influence on character; and recent writers have applied this
philosophic thesis in their employment of the element of setting.

The way in which the setting may suggest the action is thus discoursed
upon by Stevenson in his "Gossip on Romance":--

"Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance.
The pleasure that we take in life is of two sorts--the active and the
passive. Now we are conscious of a great command over our destiny;
anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by a breaking wave, and
dashed we know not how into the future. Now we are pleased by our
conduct, anon merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard to
say which of these modes of satisfaction is the more effective, but
the latter is surely the more constant....

"One thin