Sure there are. But unless they're Mark Twain or Ambrose Bierce, they're probably not much worth reading.
Before screens, people must have gotten far more enjoyment from authors painting mental pictures in tiny detail.
We have HD video as an option now. A long description of a rose bush doesn't do it for me unless it's needed for the actual narrative.
I strongly disagree. Being convoluted does not make the text more worth reading. It makes it more fun for one kind of reader. That is about it.
Being well written and pleasant to read does not make the text, whether fiction or real like account less worthy.
For my part, I've never once in my academic career had to explicitly identify sentence parts.
I can definitely see the first sentence, alone, serving as an extra credit question on a high schooler's English test: Diagram this sentence!
But that's a high schooler from my era (first half of the 90s). Much less seems to be expected of today's high schoolers.
Subject: "A throng of bearded men"
Things which gild the subject: ", in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats"
Additions to the subject: ", intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded"
Verb: ", was assembled"
Object: "in front of a wooden edifice"
Things which gild the object: ", the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes."
And I think the "was heavily timbered" would be a verb if this long sentence had been broken up into two sentences.
So basically I recall that English is typically an SVO language. And other than "verb", I have no idea what these things are called. Maybe "in front of" is an adverb? And the gilding is mostly adjectives (and noun-adjective combos)?
How'd I do?
EDIT: I wonder if maybe the long florid sentences are the entertainment of that time, kind of like how folks 100% video games today, spending a lot more time than necessary for fun. Definitely it is... Verbose though.
What you have quoted, incidentally, is complex because it combines a lot of ideas that follow on from one another. The second paragraph, in particular, starts with the forefathers of Boston allocating land for a prison and ends with disappointment and sadness that prisoners are not even afforded the beauty of nature.
In between it observes that the prisons decays rapidly and is a “gloomy” place with poorly maintained grounds, and observes the general air of hopelessness of the prison.
It’s kind of beautiful, really. It gives a lot of context.
Edit: FWIW, I have ADHD. This wasn’t an easy read, but it was worth it.
That said, after struggling through it a couple of times, taking time to reread portions, it really painted a vivid picture, casting a Gothic pall over the scene in ways a more to-the-point passage might not.
> Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.
Like tell me that doesn’t paint a picture - in a fine narrative voice!
Then again, I read a lot. I imagine this kind of thing is like exercise. This morning I followed along with a 20 minute "beginner yoga" video, and hated it because it felt painful and incomprehensible to my stiff, aging body.
Poignant. Thanks for sharing.
It's entirely possible that by the time I was into the second paragraph that I had simply adjusted to the writing style and was able to proceed without any issue; I haven't the time to properly compare the two.
A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.