Long sentences can serve as a way to break up the rhythm of prose: after a series of short sentences, a long sentence can force the reader to mentally "pause" to parse the contents of the sentence, or even just to figure out what the resulting sentence structure conveys, especially when a later part of the sentence calls back to an earlier part, turning the prose from a straightforward linear expression to a rhythmic loop, or even a self-referential construction.

Short sentences are fun too.

Likewise! I often marvel at the patience of readers of earlier times. Of course, they had more time and fewer distractions, and I suspect that there was a dynamic at work in which both the writer and reader derived a certain satisfaction from long meandering sentences, the writer proving their skill, and the reader proving (to themselves) their stamina.

Nowadays we tend to write in a plainer style demanding a smaller “parser stack”. Some style manuals have excellent examples of sentences of equal length but very different “stack depth” and thus ease of comprehension.

I remember reading the sentences in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" and thinking this. A hell of a job to parse some of these.

Audiobook narrators often get it wrong reading these older texts, they'll put emphasis in the wrong place.

I recently picked up Washington Square, and while it has that old-fashioned flavor you describe, I was struck by how readable the long sentences and baroque turns of phrase were. They flow well, they're easy to parse. And the chapters have a Netflixy, binge-able quality. I got through it much faster than I expected.

> I've always been struck by how long sentences are in writing from a century or more ago

May I recommend Ulysses by James Joyce