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354 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
were all profitless, so that men insolently call themselves
Utilitarians, who would turn, if
they had their way, themselves
and their race into vegetables men who
;
think, as far
as such can be said to think, that the meat is more than the
life and the raiment than the body, who look to the earth as
a stable and to its fruit as fodder; vine- dressers and husbandmen,
who love the corn they grind, and the grapes they
crush, better than the gardens of the angels upon the slopes
of Eden."
It is instructive to contrast the dislocated sentence, " who
would turn, if
they had their way, themselves and their race,"
with the sentence which succeeds it,
" men who think, as far
as such can be said to think, that the meat," &c. In the
latter the parenthetic interruption
is a source of power :
it dams the current to increase its force ;
in the former the
inversion is a loss of it is
power: a dissonance to the ear and
a diversion of the thought.
As illustrations of Sequence in composition, two passages
may be quoted from Macaulay which display the power of
pictorial suggestions when, instead of diverting attention from
the main purpose, they are arranged with progressive and
culminating effect.
" Such or nearly such was the change which passed on the
Mogul empire during the forty years which followed the death
of Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal sovereigns, sunk
in indolence and debauchery, sauntered away
life in secluded
palaces, chewing bhang, fondling concubines, and listening
to buffoons. A succession of ferocious invaders descended
through the western passes, to prey on the defenceless
wealth of Hindustan. A Persian conqueror crossed the
Indus, marched through the gates of Delhi, and bore away
in triumph those treasures of which the magnificence had astounded
Roe and Bernier, the Peacock Throne, on which the