unnecessarily and wantonly confusing the reader. And here it is again
my own countrymen who are chiefly in fault. That German lends itself
to this way of writing, makes the thing possible, but does not justify
it. No prose reads more easily or pleasantly than French, because, as
a rule, it is free from the error in question. The Frenchman strings
his thoughts together, as far as he can, in the most logical and
natural order, and so lays them before his reader one after the other
for convenient deliberation, so that every one of them may receive
undivided attention. The German, on the other hand, weaves them
together into a sentence which he twists and crosses, and crosses and
twists again; because he wants to say six things all at once, instead
of advancing them one by one. His aim should be to attract and hold
the reader's attention; but, above and beyond neglect of this aim, he
demands from the reader that he shall set the above mentioned rule at
defiance, and think three or four different thoughts at one and the
same time; or since that is impossible, that his thoughts shall
succeed each other as quickly as the vibrations of a cord. In this way
an author lays the foundation of his _stile empesé_, which is then
carried to perfection by the use of high-flown, pompous expressions to
communicate the simplest things, and other artifices of the same kind.

In those long sentences rich in involved parenthesis, like a box of
boxes one within another, and padded out like roast geese stuffed with
apples, it is really the _memory_ that is chiefly taxed; while it is
the understanding and the judgment which should be called into play,
instead of having their activity thereby actually hindered and
weakened.[1] This kind of sentence furnishes the reader with mere
half-phrases, which he is then called upon to collect carefully and
store up in his memory, as though they were the pieces of a torn
letter, afterwards to be completed and made sense of by the other