inished within one year: and the strike of
workmen, and the friendly colloquy with them, the good reasoning, the
unanimous return to duty; and the doubling, the trebling of the number of
them; and the most glorious of sights--O the grand old English working with
a will! as Englishmen do when they come at last to heat; and they
conquer, there is then nothing that they cannot conquer. So the conqueror
said.--And admirable were the conservatories running three long lines,
one from the drawing-room, to a central dome for tropical growths. And
the parterres were admired; also the newly-planted Irish junipers
bounding the West-walk; and the three tiers of stately descent from the
three green terrace banks to the grassy slopes over the lake. Again the
lake was admired, the house admired. Admiration was evoked for great
orchid-houses 'over yonder,' soon to be set up.

Off we go to the kitchen-garden. There the admiration is genial,
practical. We admire the extent of the beds marked out for asparagus, and
the French disposition of the planting at wide intervals; and the French
system of training peach, pear, and plum trees on the walls to win length
and catch sun, we much admire. We admire the gardener. We are induced
temporarily to admire the French people. They are sagacious in
fruit-gardens. They have not the English Constitution, you think rightly;
but in fruit-gardens they grow for fruit, and not, as Victor quotes a
friend, for wood, which the valiant English achieve. We hear and we see
examples of sagacity; and we are further brought round to the old
confession, that we cannot cook; Colney Durance has us there; we have not
studied herbs and savours; and so we are shocked backward step by step
until we retreat precipitately into the nooks where waxen tapers,
carefully tended by writers on the Press, light-up mysterious images of
our national selves for admiration. Something surely we do, or we should
not be where we are. But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course)
which others cannot do? Colney asks; and he excludes cricket and
football.

An acutely satiric man in an English circle, that does not resort to the
fist for a reply to him, may almost satiate the excessive fury roused in
his mind by an illogical people of a provocative prosperity, mainly
tongueless or of leaden tongue above the pressure of their necessities,
as he takes them to be. They give him so many opportunities. They are
angry and helpless as the l