STYLE, in literature, the word style may de defined to mean the distinctive manner of writing which belongs to each author, and also to each body of writes, allied as belonging to the some school, COMA, ry, or age. It is that which, to use the expression of Dryden, individnates each writer from all others. Tho style of an author is made up of various minute particulars, which it is extremely difficult to olcseribe, but each of which adds something to the aggregate of qual ities which belong to him. Collocation of words, turn of sentences, syntax, rhythm; the relation, abundance, and the character of his usual figures and metaphors ; the usual order in which thoughts succeed each other ; the logical form in which conclusions are generally deduced from their premises ; the par ticular qualities most insisted on in de scription ; amplification and conciseness, clearness and obscurity, directness and indirectness, exhaust ion, suggestion. sup pression—all these are features of style, in the largest sense of the expression. in which it seems to comprehe 1 n11 pecu liarities belonging to the in which thought is communicated from the writer to the reader. Excellence of style, particularly of the rhetorical parts of style, was more cultivated by the ancients than the moderns; and less, perhaps, at the present day, than at any former period since the English language began to be written in prose with correctness and elegance. Since the period when 2oolingbroke, Junius, Johnson. Gibbon, and Burke became established as models, a certain superficial sameness of style, wanting in the roughness and vulgprity, but also in the force and individuality of old English composition, seems to prevail to such an extent as to render modern writing extremely monotonous and artificial. But it should never be forgotten that whatever quality may command a temporary popularity, no work, either in poetry or prose, has ever permanently maintained its hold on pub lic admiration without excellence of style —Style, in the Fine Arts, the mode in which an artist forms and expresses his ideas on and of a given subject. It
is the form and character that lie gives to the expression of his ideas, according to his particular faculties and powers. Style may bo almost considered as the refinement of moaner; it is a charac teristic essence by W111011 we distinguish the works or one master front another. From literature this word has passed into the theoretic language of the Fine Arts ; and as in that we hear of the sublime, brilliant, agreeable, historic, regular, natural, confused, and other styles, so we have almost the same epithets ap plied to styles of art. Indeed this is not wonderful, since the principles of taste, in both the one and the other, are found ed in nature; and it is a well-known saying, that poetry is a speaking picture. This word is improperly used ti-s applied to coloring, and harmony of tints: we speak of the style of is design, of a com position, or draperies, ; but not of the style of coloring. hut rather the method or manner of coloring. The definition of this word by Sir Joshua Reynolds :'s as' follows : "Style in painting is the tame as in wriling—a power over materials, whether words or colors, by which con ceptions or sentiments are conveyed."— Style, in chronology, the manner of com puting time, with regard to the Julian or Gregorian calendar, and termed either old style or new. By the old style the year consisted of 365 days and 6 hours ; hut the new or Gregorian style was made to correspond more nearly with the period of the sun's revolution, reckoning the year to be 365 days 5 hours 99 minutes 20 seconds, by retrenching 11 days from the old style. The new style was in troduced into Germany in 1700, and in 1752 into England by act of parliament, whereby the 2.1 of September in that year was reckoned the 19th. in architecture, a particular mode of erect ing buildings, ns the Gothic style, the Saxon style, the Norman style, Ste.