or style, as for manners, must be chiefly negative: a positively
good style indicates certain natural powers in the individual, but an
unexceptionable style is merely a matter of culture and good models. Dr.
Channing established in New England a standard of style which really
attained almost the perfection of the pure and the colorless, and the
disciplinary value of such a literary influence, in a raw and crude
nation, has been very great; but the defect of this standard is that it
ends in utterly renouncing all the great traditions of literature, and
ignoring the magnificent mystery of words. Human language may be polite
and powerless in itself, uplifted with difficulty into expression by the
high thoughts it utters, or it may in itself become so saturated with
warm life and delicious association that every sentence shall palpitate
and thrill with the mere fascination of the syllables. The statue is
not more surely included in the block of marble than is all conceivable
splendor of utterance in "Worcester's Unabridged." And as Ruskin says of
painting that it is in the perfection and precision of the instantaneous
line that the claim to immortality is made, so it is easy to see that a
phrase may outweigh a library. Keats heads the catalogue of things real
with "sun, moon, and passages of Shakspeare"; and Keats himself has
left behind him winged wonders of expression which are not surpassed by
Shakspeare, or by any one else who ever dared touch the English tongue.
There may be phrases which shall be palaces to dwell in, treasure-houses
to explore; a single word may be a window from which one may perceive
all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. Oftentimes a word
shall speak what accumulated volumes have labored in vain to utter:
there may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a
sentence.

Such being the majesty of the art you seek to practise, you can at least
take time and deliberation before dishonoring it. Disabuse yourself
especially of the belief that any grace or flow of style can come from
writing rapidly. Haste can make you slipshod, but it can never make
you graceful. With what dismay one reads of the wonderful fellows in
fashionable novels, who can easily dash off a brilliant essay in a
single night! When I think how slowly my poor thoughts come in, how
tardily they connect themselves, what a delicious prolonged perplexity
it is to cut and contrive a decent clothing of words for t