1.  The Lunardi [balloon], mounting through a stagnant calm in a line almost vertical, had pierced the morning mists, and now swam emancipated in a heaven of exquisite blue.  Below us by some trick of eyesight, the country had grown concave, its horizon curving up like the rim of a shallow bowl—­a bowl heaped, in point of fact, with sea fog, but to our eyes with a froth delicate and dazzling as a whipped syllabub of snow.  Upon it the traveling shadow of the balloon became no shadow, but a stain; an amethyst (you might call it) purged of all grosser properties than color and lucency.  At times thrilled by no perceptible wind, rather by the pulse of the sun’s rays, the froth shook and parted; and then behold, deep in the crevasses vignetted and shining, an acre or two of the earth of man’s business and fret—­tilled slopes of the Lothians, ships dotted on the Firth, the capital like a hive that some child had smoked—­the ear of fancy could almost hear it buzzing.

—­Stevenson:  St. Ives. 
(Copyright, 1897.  Charles Scribner’s Sons.)

2.  When Aswald and Corinne had gained the top of the Capitol, she showed him the Seven Hills and the city, bound first by Mount Palatinus, then by the walls of Servius Tullius, which inclose the hills, and by those of Aurelian, which still surround the greatest part of Rome.  Mount Palatinus once contained all Rome, but soon did the imperial palace fill the space that had sufficed for a nation.  The Seven Hills are far less lofty now than when they deserted the title of steep mountains, modern Rome being forty feet higher than its predecessor, and the valleys which separated them almost filled up by ruins; but what is still more strange, two heaps of shattered vases have formed new hills, Cestario and Testacio.  Thus, in time, the very refuse of civilization levels the rock with the plain, effacing in the moral, as in the material world, all the pleasing inequalities of nature.

—­Madame De Stael:  Corinne:  Italy.

B.—­Select five descriptions from the following books and note whether each has a point of view expressed or implied:—­

  Cooper:  Last of the Mohicans. 
  Scott:  Ivanhoe. 
  Scott:  Lady of the Lake. 
  Irving:  Sketch Book. 
  Burroughs:  Wake Robin. 
  Van Dyke:  The Blue Flower. 
  Howells:  The Rise of Silas Lapham. 
  Muir:  Our National Parks. 
  Kate Douglas Wiggin:  Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

+Theme LIII.+—­Write a descriptive paragraph beginning with a point of view and a fundamental image.

Suggested subjects:—­
  1.  The crossroads inn.
  2.  A historical building.
  3.  The shoe factory.
  4.  The gristmill.
  5.  The largest store in town.
  6.  The union station.

(In your description underscore the sentence giving the point of view.  Can you improve the description by using a different point of view?  Will the reader form at once a correct general outline?  Will the entire description enable the reader to form a clear and accurate image?)