and qualities are given to abstract things. For example,— "We wandered where the river gleamed

'Neath oaks that mused and pines that dreamed."

4. A simile may be compressed into a metaphor; a metaphor may be expanded into a simile, as in the following example:

Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together. (Metaphor.)

Kindness is like a golden chain by which society is bound together. (Simile.)

5. Figures of speech should be used with great care. They should strike the reader as being very fitting; they should not be far-fetched; they should not be too frequent; they should seem to be spontaneous.

Exercise 1. In the following selections, find examples of simile and metaphor and personification:

1.

Thou hast brought a vine [the Jewish nation] out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like goodly cedars.-Psalm LXXX: 8-10.

2.

The day before yesterday at sunset, yesterday from the barrack windows, the sea was like a polished mirror in a framework of ebony; the light flashed upon me as though it came from a shield of silver or steel. I saw the hulls of the far-off motionless ships, for all the world as if they had been frozen where they stood. As the sun sank down, the horizon glowed and lightened like a topaz, or a precious gem of orange and red.-Taine: Journeys through France.

3.

I.

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

II.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

-Byron: The Destruction of Sennacharib.

4.

From the ledge I could see the whole of Whitton Pond, lying just below me. It looked like a silver Maltese cross with its four arms reaching out to the four points of the compass.-Bolles: At the North of Bearcamp Water.

5.

She walks the lady of my delight

A shepherdess of sheep.

Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;

She guards them from the steep.

She feeds them on the fragrant height,

And folds them in for sleep.

6.

-Alice Meynell.

A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road. Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomy of a little old man with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand had transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered about with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still thinner by pressing them forcibly together.-Hawthorne: The Great Stone Face.

7.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a nun

Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea.

8.

The night shall be filled with music,

And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

-Wordsworth.

9.

-Longfellow.

How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

-Shakespeare.

Exercise 2. In the following selections, change the metaphors to similes, or the similes to metaphors:

1.

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered short;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

2,

-Christina Georgina Rossetti.

Men are April when they woo; December when they wedi maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.-Shakespere: As you Like It.

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow-falls in the river,
A moment white-then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place;

Or like the rainbow's lovely form

Evanishing amid the storm.-Burns: Tam O'Shanter.

5.

But beyond this fortress stretches a valley, and beyond this valley another line of mountains softly veiled by a violet mist which rises from the three lakes-mysterious bluish opals, with which this broad valley is incrusted.-Bourget: Impressions of Italy.

6.

Daniel Webster struck me much like a steam-engine in trousers. -Sidney Smith.

II. Expression of Ideas in Composition.

Write a composition of not more than fifty words on one of the following subjects and introduce a simile or a metaphor:

1. The lawns in the morning sunlight after a fall of dew or a shower of rain. 2. Sail-boats in the distance when the sails are spread. 3. The wind in March when we hear it coming round the corner or down the chimney. 4. A breeze in summer stirring the leaves of oak