Paragraph 21: Meditation during vespers.

Paragraph 22: The Chapel of Edward the Confessor.

Paragraph 23: The departure.

Paragraphs 24, 25: The lesson.

We have spent the afternoon in walking with Irving among the monuments. The passage of time is indicated in paragraphs 3, 12, 19, 20, 21, 23.

II. Even at the first reading of this Sketch, one is struck by the absence of detail in description. The reason for this lack of detail is stated in paragraph 24. The few details given are mentioned not so much for their physical appearance as for the effect they produce on the beholder. In a number of cases the author is led from the object described to moralize on human life (paragraphs 7, 15, 22, 24). The finest aspect of the Sketch is found in its tone. The author strikes the key-note in the very first sentence. The season of the dying year harmonizes with the sentiment of pleasant meditative melancholy, growing out of the consciousness of the transitoriness of all things earthly. "Sic transit gloria mundi." The human heart longs for an immortal memorial, but even these monuments of stone decay and pass away. Read the Sketch through again aloud, noting the diction, the sentence-structure, the figures, and the sound effects that bring out the tone. Note, too, how the writer's imagination responds constantly to the influence of the Abbey.

III. Study in detail:

1. Contrast to the main tone in paragraphs 3 and 11. 2. Contrast of the bright and the gloomy in paragraphs

14, 15.

3. Harmony of sound and thought in paragraph 20.

4. Consult the notes in your text for explanation of allusions and other difficult points.

IV. The Sketch Book was published in 1819. With the concluding paragraph of Westminster Abbey compare these lines from Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, published in 1805.

If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight,

For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild but to flout the ruins gray.

When the broken arches are black in night,

And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruined central tower;
When buttress and buttress alternately
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;

When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;

When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave,
Then go
- but go alone the while -
Then view St. David's ruined pile;
And, home returning, soothly swear
Was never scene so sad and fair.

Irving, by echoing the diction of the well-known poem, prophesies a future for Westminster like the fate of Melrose utter ruin. Is this in harmony with the moral thought and the tone of the Sketch? (See II above.)

V. Irving's work is sometimes compared to that of the English essayist, Addison, who lived about a century earlier than Irving. Addison has an essay called Thoughts in Westminster Abbey. Read it carefully (Appendix III). Has it the same tone as Irving's Sketch? Is Addison's unity of tone as good as Irving's? Which of his paragraphs are best? Which essay is the finer production of the imagination? Which writer was more under the spell of the great Abbey?

THE RUINS OF MELROSE ABBEY

The study of Irving here suggested is of a purely literary character. The Sketches furnish excellent material for the composition class also, as models for the study of paragraph structure, of sentence form, of coherence, and of outlining, or the logical development of the whole composition.