outset, and then leaving the mind to continue the parallel.' Emerson
has employed it with great effect in the first of his I Lectures
on the Times':--"The main interest which any aspects of the Times
can have for us is the great spirit which gazes through them, the
light which they can shed on the wonderful questions, What are we,
and Whither we tend? We do not wish to be deceived. Here we drift,
like white sail across the wild ocean, now bright on the wave, now
darkling in the trough of the sea; but from what port did we sail?
Who knows? Or to what port are we bound? Who knows? There is no
one to tell us but such poor weather-tossed mariners as ourselves,
whom we speak as we pass, or who have hoisted some signal, or
floated to us some letter in a bottle from far. But what know they
more than we ? They also found themselves on this wondrous sea. No;
from the older sailors nothing. Over all their speaking trumpets
the gray sea and the loud winds answer, Not in us; not in Time."

44. The division of the Simile from the Metaphor is by no means
a definite one. Between the one extreme in which the two elements
of the comparison are detailed at full length and the analogy
pointed out, and the other extreme in which the comparison is
implied instead of stated, come intermediate forms, in which the
comparison is partly stated and partly implied. For instance:--"Astonished
at the performances of the English plow, the Hindoos paint it, set
it up, and worship it; thus turning a tool into an idol: linguists
do the same with language." There is an evident advantage in leaving
the reader or hearer to complete the figure. And generally these
intermediate forms are good in proportion as they do this; provided
the mode of completing it be obvious.

45. Passing over much that may be said of like purport upon