though they be red as crimson they shall be as wool." (Isaiah i. 18.) It is predicted of Zion, when redeemed, that God "will extend peace to her like a river," ever gliding and giving fruitfulness and beauty to the scene through which it passes; and the glory of the Gentiles, like an overflowing "stream" that is full to the banks, moving forward with a resistless current, and bearing on its bosom a rich commerce. (Isaiah lxvi. 12.)

Comparisons are of two classes. Those of the first simply affirm that one thing is like another. Thus it is said of the man of God (Judges xiii. 6), "His countenance was like an angel of God." It is said of man, "He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not." (Job xiv. 2.) The Psalmist said, "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree" (Ps. xxxvii. 35); and he predicts that "the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon." (Ps. xcii. 12.)

The other class, which is far the most effective, not only affirms the fact of a resemblance, but indicates its nature. Thus: "The man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither.

And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. But the ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away." (Ps. i. 1-4.) The relation in which each resembles that to which it is compared is thus, specified. The righteous not only resembles a tree, but a tree secured by its position from blight, and yielding fruit in its season. The ungodly is not merely like chaff, but like chaff driven away by the wind.

In the following the effect of God's word is compared to that of rain or snow on the earth:

"For as the rain cometh down,

And the snow from heaven,

And returns not thither

But waters the earth,

And makes it germinate and put forth its increase,

That it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater, So shall be the word that goeth out of my mouth;

It shall not return unto me fruitless;

It shall effect what I have willed,

And make the purpose succeed for which I sent it."

ISAIAH lv. 10, 11

* {

The most elegant and impressive of the similes of the poets are of this class. Thus Homer compares a

young warrior killed by the spear of Ajax, and

divested of his armor, to a flourishing poplar felled by the axe, and left to wither in the summer air:

"But his days were few,

Too few to recompense the care that reared
His comely growth; for Ajax, mighty chief,
Received him on his pointed spear; and pierced
Through breast and shoulder, in the dust he fell.
So nourished long in some well-watered spot,

Crowned with green boughs, the smooth-skinned poplar

falls,

Doomed by the builder to supply with wheels
Some splendid chariot. On the bank it lies,
A lifeless trunk, to parch in summer airs.
Such Ajax left, divested of his arms,

Young Simoisius."

ILIAD iv. 517-528.

Young employs the same simile to illustrate the sudden death of the beautiful and conspicuous in the glow of activity and enjoyment.

"Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow;
A blow which, while it executes, alarms,

And startles thousands with a single fall.
As when some stately growth of oak or pine,
Which nods aloft, and proudly spreads her shade,
The sun's defiance and the flocks' defence,

By the strong strokes of laboring hinds subdued,
Loud groans her last, and rushing from her height
In cumbrous ruin, thunders to the ground:

The conscious forest trembles at the shock,
And hill, and stream, and distant dale resound."

NIGHT V.

Milton compares Satan divested of his glory, to the sun shrouded in lurid clouds, or under eclipse:

"He above the rest,

In shape and gesture proudly eminent,

Stood like a tower: his form not yet had lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured. As when the sun new risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the archangel."

PARADISE LOST, b. i.

His shield he compares to the moon seen through.

a telescope:

"He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend

Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield,
Etherial temper, massy, large, and round,

Behind him cast; the broad circumference

Hung on his shoulder like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesolè,

Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, on her spotty globe."

PARADISE LOST, b. i.

Homer compares the agitation of the Greeks at Agamemnon's proposal to abandon the siege of Troy, to the movement of the sea, and of fields of grain under a powerful wind:

"Commotion shook

The whole assembly, such as heaves the flood

Of the Icarian deep, when south and east
Burst forth together from the clouds of Jove;
And as the rapid west descending shakes
Corn at full growth, and bends the loaded ears.
So was the council shaken."

1

ILIAD ii. 1. 162-168.

Scott compares the quickness with which the

tears of childhood dry, to that of the dew of flowers: