But Reid lacked the art to give due impressiveness to the important advance which his positions really contain.
He has used all his acquired science of linear and aerial perspective to create an almost complete illusion to the eye, but an illusion that has in it nothing trivial, and in heightening our sense of the material reality of the scene only heightens its profound spiritual impressiveness and gravity.
It shows many evidences of literary artistry and is not without passages of marked power and impressiveness.
The fact that the three new consuls had entered upon office and set the constitutional machinery in motion fully six weeks before the completion of the plebiscite, detracts somewhat from the impressiveness of the vox populi on that occasion.
The impressiveness and the stimulating power of the mystic ceremonies, the consciousness of being the privileged possessor of the secret wisdom of the ancients, the sense of purification from sin, and the expectation of a better life where there was to be compensation for the sufferings of this world - were all strong appeals to human nature.
