Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/243

 effect, perhaps, by a few well-chosen words; but also to establish a connexion, in the minds of his pupils, between these objects and the entire compass of descriptive terms that might be associated with them, in the way either of resemblance, contrast, or negation. For an example, and a better one does not immediately occur to me, we may take Southey’s ingenious accumulation of descriptive participles, in the well-known verses entitled, "How does the water come down at Lodore?"

Now, with the aid of a view of the Fall, a very few sentences might suffice to convey a general idea of the scene, as it affects the eye and the ear; and this would be quite enough if we intended nothing' further than to lodge the image and its accompaniments, in the mind; and if any natural water-fall has actually been seen by the learner, then a condensed description, graphically characteristic, is the best mode of conveying an idea of any other cataract. If the Falls of the Clyde, and the Fall of Lodore, have been visited, then a few words may be better than many, for describing Montmorency, Rinkanfos, or Niagara.

But after as much has been said as just satisfies the Conceptive Faculty, in its efforts to realize the scene, and what approves itself to good taste, as to the choice and collocation of epithets, then occasion may be taken (leisurely, and at different times,) to assemble around this scene, every other term in the language we can think of, which, by right of affinity, analogy, or opposition, might fairly claim a place in a description of it. Now this is done pretty nearly in the often repeated verses, above referred to; for, about a hundred and fifty participles are strung together, in these jingling stanzas, and there are scarcely three of them that can well be objected to as wholly improper to the subject, or as violently twisted from their ordinary import. And so it appears that the impressions on