Excerpt from Literary Style: And Other Essays It is beginning to be felt more keenly than for a long time before, that, as the value of the materials of a building, Whatever their cost, depends mainly upon the skill With Which they are put together, so in literary architecture it is the manner in Which the ideas are fitted together into a. Symmetrical and harmonious Whole, as well as adorned and embellished, that, quite as much as the ideas themselves, constitutes the worth of an essay, an oration, or a poem. As the diamond or the emerald, even the Kohinoor itself, - has little beauty as it lies in the mine, but must be freed from its incrustations, and cut and polished by the lapidary, before it is fit to blaze in the coronet of a queen, or to sparkle on the breast of beauty, so thought in the ore has little use or charm, and sparkles and captivates only When polished and set in cunning sentences by the literary artist. But there is another and more potent reason for the grow ing estimation of style. As an instrument for Winning the public attention, for saving the reader all needless labor, and for keeping a hold on the grateful memory, its value cannot be easily exaggerated. A hundred years ago, in the days of stage-coaches and ramage presses, When literature did not come to us in bales, and to be a man of one book was no disgrace, style might have been regarded as a luxury. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.