nd Variety. The phrase or image
which in one position will have a mild power of occupying the thoughts,
or stimulating the emotions, loses this power if made to succeed one of
like kind but more agitating influence, and will gain an accession of
power if it be artfully placed on the wave of a climax. We laugh at

"Then came Dalhousie, that great God of War,
Lieutenant-Colonel to the Earl of Mar,"

because of the relaxation which follows the sudden tension of the mind;
but if we remove the idea of the colonelcy from this position of
anti-climax, the same couplet becomes energetic rather than ludicrous--

"Lieutenant-Colonel to the Earl of Mar,
Then came Dalhousie, that great God of War."

I have selected this strongly marked case, instead of several feeble
passages which might be chosen from the first book at hand, wherein
carelessness allows the sentences to close with the least important,
phrases, and the style droops under frequent anti-climax. Let me now
cite a passage from Macaulay which vividly illustrates the effect of
Climax:--

"Never, perhaps, was the change which the progress of civilisation has
produced in the art of war more strikingly illustrated than on that
day. Ajax beating down the Trojan leader with a rock which two ordinary
men could scarcely lift; Horatius defending the bridge against an army;
Richard, the lion-hearted, spurring along the whole Saracen line
without finding an enemy to withstand his assault; Robert Bruce
crushing with one blow the helmet and head of Sir Harry Bohun in sight
of the whole array of England and Scotland,--such are the heroes of a
dark age. [Here is an example of suspended meaning, where the suspense
intensifies the effect, because each particular is vividly apprehended
in itself, and all culminate in the conclusion; they do not complicate
the thought, or puzzle us, they only heighten expectation]. In such an
age bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior.
At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society,
would have been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, were
the souls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would
have been exposed while infants. In Christendom they would, six hundred
years earlier, have been sent to some quiet cloister. But their lot had
fallen on a time when men had discovered that the strength of the
muscles is far inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is
probable tha