She herself was shocked at her own heartlessness a moment later, and in one of those absurd concatenations of ideas which run through the mind at important moments, she felt as though she had been giving a merchant an infinity of trouble to show his wares, only to buy nothing and go away.

The understanding would lose itself in the multiplicity, were it not aided by that curious concatenation of names, which has been contrived for the several parts of the succession.

[Lat.]; fearful concatenation of circumstances [D. Webster]; fortuitous combination of circumstances

By that infinite concatenation of moral causes and effects, which makes the whole world one mass of special Providences, every sin of ours will punish itself, and probably punish itself in kind.

Now one would suppose that an author who had invented this monstrous and staggering concatenation of chances, must hope to justify it by some highly dramatic situation, in the obvious and commonplace sense of the word.

Every ancient tradition and modern incident were raked together, compared, and combined; and certainly a most rare concatenation of misfortunes was elicited.

That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its alternations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by showing how great machinations and slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation.