a degree of credulity which almost
amounts to a partial and temporary derangement of the
intellect. Hence, of all people, children are the most
imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to
every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to
their mental eye produces in them the effect of reality. No
man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by
Hamlet or Lear as a little girl is affected by the story of
poor Red Riding Hood. She knows it is all false, that wolves
cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in
spite of her knowledge she believes; she weeps; she
trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should
feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the
despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds."
("Essay on Milton," by Macaulay.)

Obverse.

A fourth method of building up a paragraph from a topic-sentence
consists in telling what it is not; that is, giving the obverse. This
is very effective in argument, and is employed in exposition and
description. The obverse usually follows a positive statement, and
again is followed by the affirmative; that is, first what it is, then
what it is not, and last, what it is again. In the following
description by Ruskin, the method appears and reappears. Notice the
"nots" and "buts," indicating the change from the negative to the
positive statement. It would be a sacrilege to omit the last
paragraph, though it does not illustrate this manner of development.

"For all other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath,
and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone
flows like one lambent jewel; its surface is nowhere, its
ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and
translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to
the depth.

"Fifteen feet thick, not of flowing, but flying water; not
water, neither--melted glacier, rather, one should call it;
the force of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of the
clouds, the gladness of the sky, and the continuance of
Time.

"Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they
are always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be
seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was
always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the
wreathing of a shell. No wasting a