A Series of Contrasts or Antitheses.

Ole of the best ways of explaining a thought difficult to grasp is by the use of a number of contrasts to it. The following paragraph represents such a series organized according to the first type of the exposi¬tory paragraph : Among my daily papers which I bestow on the pub¬lic, there are some which are written with regularity and method, and others that run out into the wild¬ness of those compositions which go by the name of Essays. As for the first, I have the whole scheme of the discourse in my mind before I set pen to paper. In the other kind of writing, it is sufficient that I have several thoughts on a subject, without troubling myself to range them in such order, that they may seem to grow out of one another, and be disposed under the proper heads. . . . When I read an author of genius who writes without method, I fancy myself in a wood that abounds with a great many noble objects, rising among one another in the greatest confusion and disorder. When I read a methodical discourse, I am in a regular plantation, and can place myself in its several centers, so as to take a view of all the lines and walks that are struck from them. You may ramble in the one a whole day together, and every moment discover something or other that is new to you ; but when you have done, you will find but a confused imperfect notion of the place : in the other, your eye commands the whole prospect, and gives you such an ,idea of it, as is not easily worn out of the memory. - JOSEPH ADDISON, The Spectator.