he whole of the battle."[11]

In "The Vision of Sir Launfal" Lowell opens his beautiful description
with the words, "And what is so rare as a day in June?" From this
general and comprehensive sentence follow all the details which make a
June day perfect.

Hawthorne, after telling how he happened to write of him, begins his
long description of "The Old Apple Dealer" with the following
paragraph:--

"He is a small man, with gray hair and gray stubble beard,
and is invariably clad in a shabby surtout of snuff color,
closely buttoned, and half concealing a pair of gray
pantaloons; the whole dress, though clean and entire, being
evidently flimsy with much wear. His face, thin, withered,
furrowed, and with features which even age has failed to
render impressive, has a frost-bitten aspect. It is a moral
frost which no physical warmth or comfortableness could
counteract. The summer sunshine may fling its white heat
upon him, or the good fire of the depot room may make him
the focus of its blaze on a winter's day; but all in vain;
for still the old man looks as if he were in a frosty
atmosphere, with scarcely warmth enough to keep life in the
region about his heart. It is a patient, long-suffering,
quiet, hopeless, shivering aspect. He is not
desperate,--that, though its etymology implies no more,
would be too positive an expression,--but merely devoid of
hope. As all his past life, probably, offers no spots of
brightness to his memory, so he takes his present poverty
and discomfort as entirely a matter of course; he thinks it
the definition of existence, so far as himself is concerned,
to be poor, cold, and uncomfortable. It may be added, that
time has not thrown dignity as a mantle over the old man's
figure: there is nothing venerable about him: you pity him
without a scruple."

So this old apple dealer shivers all through this description of nine
pages to the last sentences:--

"God be praised, were it only for your sake, that the
present shapes of human existence are not cast in iron nor
hewn in everlasting adamant, but moulded of the vapors that
vanish away while the essence flits upward to the Infinite.
There is a spiritual essence in this gray and lean old shape
that shall flit upward too. Yes; doubtless there is a region
where the lifelong shiver will pas