An age of unlimited declamation, an age of incessant talk, is a hotbed in which real depth and nobility of feeling runs miserably to seed.

Style is never worse than it is in ages which employ themselves in teaching little else.

Such teaching produces an emptiness of thought concealed under a plethora of words.

This age of countless oratorical masters was emphatically the period of decadence and decay.

There is a hollow ring about it, a falsetto tone in its voice; a fatiguing literary grimace in the manner of its authors.