Occasionally he uses the long oratorical climactic period, consist ing of a number of clauses in the same construction gradually increasing in length so as to form a climax. Thus

"The energy of Innocent the Third, the zeal of the young orders of Francis and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crusaders, whom the priesthood let loose on an unwarlike population, crushed the Albigensian Churches."

Again, in a sketch of the Reformation—

"The study of the ancient writers, the rapid development of the powers of the modern languages the unprecedented activity which was displayed in every department of literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the Roman Court, the exactions of the Roman Chancery, the jealousy with which the wealth and privileges of the clergy were naturally regarded by laymen, the jealousy with which Italian ascendancy was naturally regarded by men born on our side of the Alps-all these things gave to the teachers of the new theology an advantage which they perfectly understood how to use." In the last example there are two climaxes in sound.

A large proportion of his sentences contain words and clauses in formal balance; but the effect of this would not be so striking were it not that his composition contains so much antithesis in other modes. The general predominance of antithesis we shall consider in its place under Figures of Speech; here we have to do properly with balanced forms, whether embodying antithesis or not.

He makes considerable use of conventional balanced phrases for amplifying the roll of the sentence. Thus-" After full inquiry, and impartial reflection;" "men who have been tried by equally strong temptations, and about whose lives we possess equally full information;" no hidden causes to develop, no remote consequences to predict;"" very pleasing images of paternal tenderness and filial duty;" and so forth.

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The following is an example of balance without antithesis. is valuable as an artificial mode of giving separate emphasis to two things involved in the same argument-a preventive against confusion::

"Now it does not appear to us to be the first object that people should always believe in the established religion, or be attached to the established government. A religion may be false. A government may be oppressive. And whatever support governments give to false religions, or religion to oppressive governments, we consi ier as a clear evil."

While this mode of statement has undeniably its advantages, it is obviously too startling an artifice to be often employed. The two short sentences, interjected without connectives, are examples of one element of our author's abruptness.

The following passages show balance combined with antithesis:"Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned demagogues; the successors of the old Roundheads had turned courtiers. Yet was it long

before their mutual animosity began to abate; for it is the nature of parties to retain their original enmities far more firmly than their original principles. During many years, a generation of Whigs, whom Sidney would have spurned as slaves, continued to wage deadly war with a generation of Tories whom Jeffreys would have hanged for Republicans.'

"With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles of the middle ages. Both readily found what they sought; and both obstinately refused to see anything but what they sought. The champions of the Stuarts could easily point out instances of oppression exercised on the subject. The defenders of the Roundheads could as easily produce instances of determined and successful resistance offered to the Crown. The Tories quoted from ancient writings expressions almost as servile as were heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The Whigs discovered expressions as bold and severe as any that resounded from the judgment-seat of Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous instances in which kings had extorted money without the authority of Parliament. Another set cited cases in which the Parliament had resumed to itself the power of inflicting punishment on kings. Those who saw only one half of the evidence would have concluded that the Plantagenets were as absolute as the Sultans of Turkey; those who saw only the other half would have concluded that the Plantagenets had as little real power as the Doges of Venice; and both conclusions would have been equally remote from the truth."

It is a pretty general opinion among critics that Macaulay overdid this artifice of style. Even his apologist in the Edinburgh Review' admitted that his sentences were sometimes "too curiously balanced." As he himself said of Tacitus-"He tells a fine story finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He stimulates till stimulants lose their power." The worst of it is that exact balance cannot long be kept up, as in the above passage, without a sacrifice of strict truth; both sides are extremely exaggerated to make the antithesis more telling.

Paragraphs.

1. The striking characteristic of abruptness in Macaulay's style is caused chiefly by his peculiar ways of transition and connection. He does not conduct us from one statement to another with the deliberate formality of De Quincey. We are seldom left in doubt as to the bearing of his statements; but we are often kept in sus pense, and generally we must make out connections for ourselves without the help of explicit phrases.

Let us, for example, study his way of introducing the general proposition italicised in the middle of the following passage:

"The state of society in the Neapolitan dominions, and in some parts of the Ecclesiastical State, more nearly resembled that which existed in the great monarchies of Europe. But the governments of Lombardy and Tuscany, through all their revolutions, preserved a different character. A people when assembled in a town is far more formidable to its rulers than when dispersed over a wide extent of country. The most arbitrary of the Cæsars found it necessary to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at the expense of the provinces. The citizens of Madrid have more than once

besieged their sovereign in his own palace, and extorted from him the most humiliating concessions. The Sultans have often been compelled to propitiate the furions rabble of Constantinople with the head of an unpopular vizier. From the same cause there was a certain tinge of democracy in the monarchies and aristocracies of Northern Italy."

The general proposition is introduced abruptly. We are expect ing a statement about the governments of Lombardy and Tuscany, when, with a sudden jerk, the circle of our vision is widened, and we are presented with a general comparison between the government natural to cities and the government natural to country districts. If we are familiar with the subject, and if our attention is fully awake, we at once have a dim perception of the writer's drift, and read on till it is distinctly enunciated. But undoubtedly the sudden transition has an abrupt effect. It has not the equable smoothness of De Quincey's transitions. The artifice is not unlike the common practice of beginning an essay with a statement that has no obvious connection with the title. We feel a momentary astonishment, and we are put upon our mettle to anticipate the application. To be sure, these unapplied generalities have not quite so much of an abrupt effect when they come upon us at the beginning. At the beginning our attention is supposed to be free. Nothing has gone before to preoccupy us except the title. At any point in the body of the essay our attention is supposed to be engrossed with the particular subject of exposition; and we start when the expected flow of the discourse is suddenly checked, and we are jerked upon a new line.

So much for the abrupt introduction of generalities. Any page of Macaulay will furnish the reader with other examples. The first sentence of the above passage illustrates another mode of abrupt transition. The subject of the paragraph is the government of the States of Lombardy and Tuscany; but the paragraph opens with a statement concerning the government of the Neapolitan dominions. Instead of laying down directly the state of society in Lombardy and Tuscany, he begins with an independent assertion about the state of society in the Neapolitan dominions. He has been describing Lombardy and Tuscany; and the reader is expected to understand, without any explicit connective, that the assertion about the Neapolitan States is meant as a contrast. The effect is very much the same as is produced by the sudden introduction of a generality. We presently see the drift of the statement, yet we experience a momentary astonishment. This mode of construction is much in favour with Macaulay. We are constantly being jerked away from the immediate subject, and jerked back with a but." Thus, in a disquisition on the dramatists of the Restoration, he suddenly opens a new paragraph with the statement—

"In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible."

This is not, as we might suppose, the opening of a digression on the old drama. He is merely taking a step out of the subject that he may return with greater force. The next sentence is-

"But whoever compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained in the volume before us, will see how much the profligacy which follows a period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy which precedes such a period."

In the same Essay a paragraph on the morality of Greek writings proceeds as follows:

"The immoral English writers of the seventeenth century are indeed much less excusable than those of Greece and Rome. But the worst English writings of the seventeenth century are decent, compared with much that has been bequeathed to us by Greece and Rome. Plato, we have little doubt, was a much better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has written things at which Sir George Etherege would have shuddered."

The effect of these sudden interruptions of continuity is still more abrupt when the contrasting statement is introduced, as it were, in fragments. Thus, towards the close of a flowing declamation on the beneficial influence of the Romam Catholic Church in the dark ages, he staggers us by abruptly declaring

"The sixteenth century was comparatively a time of light."

Of this fragmentary statement we can make nothing. We stumble on, bewildered, to the next :—

"Yet even in the sixteenth century a considerable number of those who quitted the old religion followed the first confident and plausible guide who offered himself, and were soon led into errors far more serious than they had renounced.

Now we can guess at his drift, and pass lightly over a sentence of examples—

"Thus Matthias and Kniperdoling, apostles of lust, robbery, and murder, were able for a time to rule great cities

reaching the explicit statement of the idea in the following

sentence:

"In a darker age such false prophets might have founded empires; and Christianity might have been distorted into a cruel and licentious superstition, more noxious not only than Popery, but even than Islamism.”

Apart from the abruptness of these sudden and discontinuous changes of subject, the introduction of generalities, contrasting statements, qualifications, and suchlike, before we know formally their bearing upon the subject in hand, has something of the effect of the periodic structure upon a larger scale: we are, as in an expanded period, kept in suspense until the application is fully developed.

2. The rule of Parallel Construction is that "when several consecutive sentences iterate or illustrate the same idea, they should, as far as possible, be formed alike." Macaulay observes this rule better perhaps than any of our popular writers. With his natural sense of perspicuous effect, he felt the advantage of keeping the principal subject prominent throughout all the sentences of a paragraph.

He is far, indeed, from being perfect. Thus, in the passage recently quoted concerning the Italian States, the illustrations of the general principle invert the position of the leading subject. The general proposition is made concerning the people, and two of the illustrations are stated as if the subject of discourse had been the despots and their hardships. Consider, for instance, the first illustration :—

"The most arbitrary of the Cæsars found it necessary to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at the expense of the provinces." Here the phrase "at the expense of the provinces" is improperly prominent: who paid the bill is a matter of no importance; the point is that the inhabitants of Rome extorted the treat. Let us put it as follows:

“The inhabitants of the unwieldy capital of the Cæsars exacted expensive bounties of food and diversion from the most arbitrary of their masters." Our amendment may be less elegant, but, in that particular connection, it is more perspicuous.

Though open to improvement, Macaulay undoubtedly owes not a little of his perspicuity to the observance of this rule. Whole paragraphs might be quoted containing little or nothing to alter; particularly when he exerts himself to give a sustained account of an institution or an individual-the Roman Catholic Church or Hyder Ali. When he does not give the leading place to the principal subject, he awards it to some subject introduced in his peculiar way for purposes of contrast, and for the time occupying the foreground in the exposition.

The uses of parallel structure may be studied to advantage in Macaulay. Usually but slight alterations are required, and no harm need be done to the variety of his expression. The following is another good case where some slight changes make an obvious improvement. The passage occurs in an exposition of the theme that "No men occupy so splendid a place in history as those who have founded monarchies on the ruins of republican institutions":—

"In nations broken to the curb, in nations long accustomed to be transferred from one tyrant to another, a man without eminent qualities may easily gain supreme power. The defection of a troop of guards, a conspiracy of eunuchs, a popular tumult, might place an indolent senator or a brutal