This sentence, although it would not be too long, if properly managed, is too long as it stands. The ear repeatedly seeks, and expects the conclusion, and is repeatedly disappointed. It expects the close at the word "entering"—at the word "life"—at the word "provinces"—and at the word "resources." Each additional portion of the sentence after each of the words just designated by inverted commas, has the air of an after-thought engrafted upon the original idea. The use of the word "vomitory" in the present instance is injudicious. Strictly speaking, a road which serves as a vomitory, or means of egress, for a population, serves also as a means of ingress. A good writer, however, will consider not only whether, in all strictness, his words will admit of the meaning he attaches to them, but whether in their implied, their original, or other collateral meanings, they may not be at variance with some portion of his sentence. When we hear of "a vomitory by which we were entering," not all the rigor of the most exact construction will reconcile us to the phrase—since we are accustomed to connect with the word vomitory, notions precisely the reverse of those allied to the subsequent word "entering." Between the participle "laden" and the nouns to which it refers (carts, wagons, caravans and asses) two other nouns and one pronoun are suffered to intervene—a grammatical arrangement which when admitted in any degree, never fails to introduce more or less obscurity in every sentence where it is so admitted. Strict syntatical order would require (the pronoun "we" being followed immediately by "laden") that—not the asses—but Lieutenant Slidell and his companions should be laden with the various commodities.
And now, too, we began to see horsemen jantily dressed in slouched hat, embroidered jacket, and worked spatterdashes, reining fiery Andalusian coursers, each having the Moorish carbine hung at hand beside him.
Were horsemen, in this instance, a generic term—that is, did the word allude to horsemen generally, the use of the "slouched hat" and "embroidered jacket" in the singular, would be justifiable—but it is not so in speaking of individual horsemen, where the plural is required. The participle "reining" properly refers to "spatterdashes," although of course intended to agree with "horsemen." The word "each," also meant to refer to the "horsemen," belongs, strictly speaking, to the "coursers." The whole, if construed by the rigid rules of grammar, would imply that the horsemen were dressed in spatterdashes—which spatterdashes reined the coursers—and which coursers had each a carbine.
Perhaps these were farmers of the better order; but they had not the air of men accustomed to labor; they were rather, perhaps, Andalusian horse-dealers, or, maybe, robbers, of those who so greatly abound about the capital, who for the moment, had laid aside their professional character.
This is an exceedingly awkward sentence. The word "maybe" is, we think, objectionable. The repetition of the relative "who" in the phrases "who so greatly abound" and "who for the moment had laid aside," is the less to be justified, as each "who" has a different antecedent—the one referring to "those" (the robbers, generally, who abound about the capital) and the other to the suspected "robbers" then present. But the whole is exceeding ambiguous, and leaves a doubt of the author's true meaning. For, the words "Andalusian horse-dealers, or, maybe, robbers of those who abound about the capital," may either imply that the men in question were some of a class of robbers who abounded, &c. or that they were men who robbed (that is, robbers of) the Andalusian horse-dealers who abounded, &c. or that they were either Andalusian horse-dealers, or robbers of those who abound about the capital—i.e. of the inhabitants of the suburbs. Whether the last "who" has reference to the robbers, or to those who abound, it is impossible to learn from any thing in the sentence itself—which, taken altogether, is unworthy of the merest tyro in the rules of composition.
At the inn of the Holy Ghost, was drawn up a highly gilded carriage, hung very low, and drawn by five gaily decorated mules, while two Andalusians sat on the large wooden platform, planted, without the intervention of springs, upon the fore-wheels, which served for a coach-box.
This sentence is intelligible enough, but still badly constructed. There is by far too great an interval between the antecedent "platform" and its relative "which," and upon a cursory perusal any reader would be led to suppose (what indeed the whole actually implies) that the coach-box in question consisted not of the platform, but actually of the fore-wheels of the carriage. Altogether, it may safely be asserted, that an entire page containing as many grammatical errors and inaccuracies of arrangement as the one we have just examined, will with difficulty be discovered in any English or American writer of even moderate reputation. These things, however, can hardly be considered as more than inadvertences, and will be avoided by Lieutenant Slidell as soon as he shall feel convinced (through his own experience or through the suggestions of his friends) how absolutely necessary to final success in any undertaking is a scrupulous attention to even the merest minutiæ of the task.
ANTHON'S SALLUST.