called "atmosphere." This quality is very difficult to define, though
its presence may be recognized instinctively in any work of graphic
art, like a painting or a description. Without attempting to define
it, we may discover the technical basis for its presence if we seek
out the sole deliberate device in which these two passages, different
as they are in every other feature, are at one. It will be noticed
that in each of them the details selected for presentation have been
chosen solely for the sake of a common quality inherent in them--the
quality of somberness and gloom in the one case, and the quality of
Sabbath quietude in the other--and that they have been marshaled to
convey a complete sense of this central and pervading quality. It is
commonly supposed that what is called "atmosphere" in a description
is dependent upon the setting forth of a multiplicity of details; but
this popular conception is a fallacy. "Atmosphere" is dependent rather
upon a strict selection of details pervaded by a common quality, a
rigorous rejection of all others that are dissonant in mood, and an
arrangement of those selected with a view to exhibiting their common
quality as the pervading spirit of the scene.

This is obviously the technical basis for the "atmosphere" of a purely
imaginary setting like that of the melancholy House of Usher. The
effect is undeniably produced by the suppression of all details that
do not contribute to the central sense of gloom. But the same device
underlies (less obviously, to be sure) all such descriptions of actual
places as are rich in "atmosphere." What is called "local color"--the
very look and tone of a definite locality--is produced not by
photographic multiplicity of details, but by a marshaling of materials
carefully selected to suggest the central spirit of the place to
be depicted. The camera frequently defeats itself by flinging into
emphasis details that are dissonant with the informing spirit of the
scene it seeks to reproduce: so also does the author who overcrowds
his picture with multifarious details, however faithful they may be to
fact. The true triumphs of "local coloring" have been made by men who
have struck at the heart and spirit of a place--have caught its tone
and timbre as George Du Maurier did with the _Quartier Latin_--and
have set forth only such details as tingled with this spiritual tone.

We have studied the many uses of the element of setting, and have
seen that in th