sublime into its three varieties, physical, intellectual, moral. His remarks on these various divisions are just and good. He acknowledges his indebtedness to Burke, but disputes the latter's doctrine" that terror is the source of the sublime, and that no objects have this character but such as produce impressions of pain and danger." "It is indeed true," he says, "that many terrible objects are highly sublime; and that grandeur does not refuse an alliance with the idea of danger. But though this is very properly illustrated by the author (many of whose sentiments on that head I have adopted), yet he seems to stretch his theory too far when he represents the sublime as consisting wholly in modes of danger or of pain. For the proper sensation of sublimity appears to be distinguishable from the sensation of either of these; and, on several occasions, to be entirely separated from these. In many grand objects there is no coincidence with terror at all; as in the magnificent prospect of wide extended plains and of the starry firmament; or in the moral dispositions and sentiments which we view with high admiration." A little earlier he remarks that all ideas of the solemn and awful kind, and even bordering on the terrible, tend greatly to assist the sublime: such as darkness, solitude and silence." All this is excellent, and needs very little improving to constitute a thoroughly sound doctrine of the sublime. The sublime undoubtedly rests on terror, but on terror disguised and softened; and the outcome of this artistic handling of terror is that we get three varieties of strength -maleficent, neutral, beneficent, the last of these bringing us within reach of the quality opposed to sublimity, pathos. A weakness in Blair's treatment is that he fails to recognize what he calls strength and vivacity as simply minor varieties of the sublime. On the sublime in style his chief observation is that simplicity, conciseness, and the proper choice of circumstances are essential, and that rhyme is a hindrance; but this cannot be maintained as a general proposition. Examples are easily obtained where sublimity co-exists with ornament, diffuseness and rhyme. In the concluding lines of the Dunciad there is certainly sublimity, though they are rhyming lines, and are not to be called simple; Scott's account of Flodden is written in rhyming lines and the language may fairly be called diffuse, yet the whole description is a masterpiece of powerful writing, and most critics would find the sublime in lines like these:

"Nor martial shout, nor minstrel tone,
Announced their march; their tread alone,
At times one warning trumpet blown,

At times a stifled hum,

Told England, from his mountain throne
King James did rushing come.”

Sublimity belongs to such writing as well as to lines like Tennyson's,

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Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow," where the words vibrate with suppressed force. Blair begins the discussion of beauty in a highly promising way, by differentiating its characteristic emotion. "The emotion which it raises is very distinguishable from that of sublimity. It is of a calmer kind, more gentle and soothing; does not elevate the mind so much, but produces an agreeable serenity. Sublimity raises a feeling too violent, as I showed, to be lasting; the pleasure arising from beauty admits of longer continuance. It extends also to a much greater variety of objects than sublimity, to a variety indeed so great that the feelings which beautiful objects produce, differ considerably not in degree only, but also in kind from one another."

In his curious material phraseology, Burke had made the important remark that beautiful objects have the tendency to produce an agreeable relaxation of the fibres, and Blair, grasping the significance of this, makes the beautiful almost synonymous with tender feeling. Discussing the old question, what is beauty? Blair refuses to recognize beauty as dependent on any one property, and, while admitting the part often played by association, he does not accept the position afterwards so elaborately defended by Alison, that beauty depends wholly on association. Beauty in style he defines as the quality that "raises in the reader an emotion of the gentle, placid kind, similar to what is raised by the contemplation of beautiful objects in nature." His remarks on the remaining qualities are too brief to demand notice.

When he comes to deal with the kinds of composition, Blair ceases to be practical. He discourses voluminously on all the possible varieties of written matter, and pours forth a wealth of observations, historical and critical, but, though here and there are just remarks, there is a fatal lack of useful general principles. In our own day the school of Kames, Campbell, and Blair is represented by Dr. Bain, of Aberdeen. His works on the subjects considered in the preceding pages have long been text-books,

and, therefore, it is unnecessary to do more than indicate the differentia of his treatment. In the first place, then, he has been able to free rhetoric from the large amount of purely grammatical details to be found in his predecessors' volumes: all such matters are discussed in separate text-books dealing with grammar. In the second place, he has developed in a more comprehensive and thorough manner Blair's plan of driving home the exposition of principles both by short examples and by detailed criticism of selected passages. At the same time, he is careful to lay stress on the fact that such work, necessary and fruitful as it is, is only the companion of wide reading. In the third place, being a metaphysician and a logician even more than a rhetorician, he has been able to build rhetoric far more firmly than his predecessors could on psychology and logic. The good results of this strictly Aristotleian plan are everywhere visible in his exposition.

Treating of style in general, that is, of number and order of words, figures of speech, the sentence and the paragraph, and qualities of style, Dr. Bain has preserved the best of his predecessor's material, and has made important additions. To number of words, he has added a useful section on the practical question how to secure brevity; to order of words a clear exposition of the principles governing the order of words and the distribution of emphasis in the sentence. As was pointed out, the earlier rhetoricians fail to discover any good way of classifying the figures of speech. Dr. Bain arranges the majority of the commonest figures in groups corresponding to the operations of the intellect, and thus gets figures of similarity, of contrast, of contiguity. This introduces a considerable amount of order, and greatly helps the treatment of an important subject. The unity of the sentence receives more adequate consideration than Kames, Campbell, or Blair had given to it; the importance and the nicety of the topic are recognized by a full and careful discussion. More important still, the paragraph is, for the first time, properly dealt with, and the laws regulating its structure are set forth in detail. The treatment of the qualities of style is in strong contrast to that followed by Kames, Campbeil, and Blair. Like the figures of speech, they are reduced to order by being referred to their psychological basis. A clear line is drawn between intellectual and emotional qualities, between qualities like simplicity and clearness, which appeal to the understanding and qualities like strength and

pathos which appeal to the feelings. In the same way, by abstracting from beauty what belongs to tender feeling, there is secured a quality directly opposed to the sublime; this has the additional advantage of allowing beauty to be more clearly discussed as an assemblage of separate art effects. The discussion, it may be noted, of strength and tender feeling, is on an extensive scale, embracing in each case an elaborate survey of the vocabulary, the conditions, the subjects and the varieties of the quality. The alliance of humor with both strength and tender feeling, but rather with the latter, and of ridicule with strength, and the independent nature of wit are fully exhibited. The other qualities receive briefer, but nevertheless suggestive consideration.

A still larger improvement on the methods of the earlier Scottish rhetoricians is shown in the handling of the kinds of composition. In the case of poetry, its distinguishing characteristics are set forth with a precision not to be found in Kames, Campbell or Blair. Campbell did a good deal for persuasion, and Whately did still more, but they did not exhaust the subject. Dr. Bain has added to the exposition both on its logical and on its psychological side, and has also aided it by his chapters on description, narration, exposition: these kinds of composition are useful allies of persuasion. As has been shown, they get little useful attention from Kames, Campbell, or Blair; in Dr. Bain's volumes they are dealt with in the fullest and most practical way, and are of the highest value to students of composition.

The rhetoricians whose works have now been considered may fairly be awarded the praise of having made valuable contributions to the discussion of the subjects they deal with, and of having produced volumes that must interest and profit both lovers of literature and students of style.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN DOLLAR.

THOMAS HOLMES, HAMBURGH, CONN.

[

HEN, upon the trail of Columbus, home-seekers came from England, France and other parts of Europe to establish themselves upon the shores of America, they brought with them the solid money of their native kingdoms. The supply was lim

ited and, as the new settlers could produce nothing that they could exchange for coin, their limited supply of currency was soon exhausted. They were compelled to establish a currency of their own, and, in so doing, perhaps, established the principle upon which the idea of reciprocity has since been built.

The pelts of beavers and muskrats, and beads and shells were made legal tender, and when the supply of these articles became too limited, wheat and corn and cattle were appropriated for financial purposes.

A good deal of fault is found now-a-days by fastidious persons regarding the hard money, and especially the silver small coins. that, after all, make a pretty sure ballast for a man who, in the nature of things, is obliged to cross the sea of life. The gold and silver coins of the present day are wonderfully convenient when compared with the money of our Puritan ancestors.

In 1635, for the purpose of keeping this defensive amunition in circulation, the authorities of Massachusetts issued, as money, lead bullets, each of which was given the value of a farthing, but a man of ordinary mental calibre, who could manage to get hold of lead enough, could demonstrate his ability to mould a pocketful of farthings in a few hours, and it was soon discovered that the coinage of farthings was increasing at a disastrous rate, while the circulation of money of larger denomination was growing conspicuously less. Consequently the dignity of legal tender was taken from lead bullets.

Seventeen years later a mint was established in Massachusetts. and silver coined. This was the year 1652, that the pine tree currency was introduced. For a time this plan worked satisfactorily, but the supply of silver soon decreased to such a degree that in two years after the establishment of the mint the residents of the Bay State were passing to each other dried fish and pine boards as money. It is probable that our forefathers who were citizens of that state experienced more inconvenience in carrying an armful of boards around with them when on a purchasing tour, than the citizen does to-day, who thinks it a hardship to be obliged to accept a handful of silver coins as money. The mint did business in a sort of a way until 1686, when the King of England suppressed it and a bank was established.

The system of paper money began in 1690, when the government attempted to discharge the debts incurred in the expedition