C. SETTING.

1. William Makepeace Thackeray.

Born 1811. Died 1863.

FROM Henry Esmond, BOOK II., CHAPTER IX.

[Aside from mere names and dates, which are often, as in the summary of Kidnapped (p. 38), or a great many newspaper narratives, merely names and figures, and which, as regards the ordinary reader, might be interchanged without destroying the sense of a passage, time and place have a definite value in structure, and may be indispensable to clearness. To every reader will occur the time-references and the exact description of place in Robinson Crusoe, so invaluable to the clear action of the story; and the time divisions at the head of each book of Tom Jones, the excellent use of place-description in the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, and the map in Treasure Island, are cases in point. The nature of structural place-description is clear in the following passage.]

THE French right was posted near to the village of Blenheim, on the Danube, where the Marshal Tallard's quarters were; their line extending through, it may be a league and a half, before Lutzingen and up to a woody hill, round the base of which, and acting against 5 the Prince of Savoy, were forty of his squadrons.

Here was a village that the Frenchmen had burned, the wood being, in fact, a better shelter and easier of guard than any village.

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Before these two villages and the French lines ran a little stream, not more than two foot broad, through a marsh (that was mostly dried up from the heats of the weather), and this stream was the only separation 5 between the two armies-ours coming up and ranging themselves in line of battle before the French, at six o'clock in the morning; so that our line was quite visible to theirs; and the whole of this great plain was black and swarming with troops for hours before Io the cannonading began.

On one side and the other this cannonading lasted many hours. The French guns being in position in front of their line, and doing severe damage among our Horse especially, and on our right wing of 15 Imperialists under the Prince of Savoy, who could neither advance his artillery nor his lines, the ground before him being cut up by ditches, morasses, and very difficult of passage for the guns.

2. Mathaniel Hawthorne.

Born 1804. Died 1864.

FROM The Scarlet Letter, CHAPTER VII.

[In the following passage setting has a far different use. The extract has very little to do with the development of the plot of the novel; indeed, but for the fact that Hester and Pearl went to see the royal governor, it might have been omitted entire. But in the moral symbolism of the story the description is most necessary. Incidentally giving a glimpse of a Colonial house in New England, the details of the description are obviously introduced

Used by the kind permission of, and by arrangement with, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of The Scarlet Letter.

to lead up to the final detail, the burnished helm and breastplate, in which the ever present A is so distorted as at once to suggest the inevitable and growing hideousness of the crime. The effect is heightened and the symbolism brought out more clearly by the maliciousness of Pearl.]

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of entrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of his building-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habi- 5 tation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all the 10 other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of 15 those embowed hall-windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, 20 we scatter gilded volumes on the center-table, to be turned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same 25 taste; the whole being of Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither from the

governor's paternal home. On the table-in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality had not been left behind-stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, 5 they might have seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale.

On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs Io and robes of peace. All were characterized by the sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on; as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and 15 enjoyments of living men.

At about the center of the oaken panels that lined the hall was suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skillful 20 armorer in London the same year in which Governor Bellingham came over to New England. There was

a steel headpiece, a cuirass, a gorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, 25 so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but had been worn by the governor on many a solemn muster and training field, and had glittered, 30 moreover, at the head of a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch as his professional

associates, the exigencies of this new country had transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesman and ruler.

Little Pearl-who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor as she had been with the glittering 5 frontispiece of the house-spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.

"Mother," cried she, "I see you here. Look! Look!"

Hester looked, by way of humoring the child; and ic she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl 15 pointed upward, also, at a similar picture in the headpiece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth 20 and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mold itself into Pearl's shape.

3. George Meredith.

Born 1828.

FROM The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, CHAPTER XLIII.

[Setting may also serve as an accompaniment to the narrative, and may blend the bare details in one harmony. The very dramatic quality of the passage which follows-it is needless to