One of Pater’s happiest accomplishments was his power of bringing up in a few words a figure or a scene, beautiful in itself and charged moreover with a further and remote significance, revealing as by a sudden glimpse or hint some solemn thought enshrined within the outer form. Thus he said once that churches where the Sacrament was reserved gave one the sense of a house where a dead friend lies; and again in a subtle allegory he touched the difference between Roman Catholicism with all its rich fabric of association and tradition, and Puritanism with its naked insistence on bare rectitude and rigid conduct. Roman Catholicism, he said, was like a table draped in fair linen, covered with lights and flowers and vessels of crystal and silver; while Puritanism was like the same table, after it had been cleared, serviceable enough, but without charm or grace. The essential form present in both; but the one furnished with rich and dainty accessories, the other unadorned and plain. It may be said generally that richness under a severe restraint is the principal characteristic of Pater’s style; but there are two or three special small characteristics, almost amounting to mannerisms, which may be noted in his writing. One is the natural result of his habit of composition; it is of overloading his sentences, of introducing long parentheses, of heaping fine detail together, which sometimes gives an impression of over-luxuriousness. Here is a typical sentence, out of one of the _Guardian Essays_, the review of Wordsworth:— “An emanation, a particular spirit, belonged not to the moving leaves or water only, but to the distant peak arising suddenly, by some change of perspective, above the nearer horizon of the hills, to the passing space of light across the plain, to the lichened Druidic stone even, for a certain weird fellowship in it with the moods of men.” This sentence has every charm except the charm of perfect lucidity. But any one who enjoys the characteristic quality of Pater, will be able to give its due value to the slight blurring of outline on which the charm to a certain extent depends. Again, he was fond of beginning a sentence with the emphatic phrase, and thus inverting the clause. Where another writer would say, “That tale of hours, the long chanted English service, develops patience,” Pater wrote: “It develops patience—that tale of hours, the long chanted English service.” And again: “Horace!—he was, had been always, the idol of their school.” And again: “Submissiveness!—It had the force of genius with Emerald Uthwart.” Such sentences, occurring as a rule at the opening of a paragraph, are of constant occurrence. He had a fondness for points of exclamation: “How wretched! how fine! how inconceivably great and difficult!—not for him!” and his frequent introduction of the word “say!” with its stop breaking the continuity of the clause where an ordinary writer would use “for instance,” is a favourite usage.