ve with the poor, and think they have a cause to be pleaded,
when I look at those people. We scoff at the vanity of the French, but it
is a graceful vanity; pardonable compared with ours.'

'I've read all that a hundred times,' quoth Tuckham bluntly.

'So have I. I speak of it because I see it. We scoff at the simplicity of
the Germans.'

'The Germans live in simple fashion, because they're poor. French
vanity's pretty and amusing. I don't know whether it's deep in them, for
I doubt their depth; but I know it's in their joints. The first spring of
a Frenchman comes of vanity. That you can't say of the English. Peace to
all! but I abhor cosmopolitanism. No man has a firm foothold who pretends
to it. None despises the English in reality. Don't be misled, Miss
Halkett. We're solid: that is the main point. The world feels our power,
and has confidence in our good faith. I ask for no more.'

'With Germans we are supercilious Celts; with Frenchmen we are sneering
Teutons:--Can we be loved, Mr. Tuckham?'

'That's a quotation from my friend Lydiard. Loved? No nation ever was
loved while it lived. As Lydiard says, it may be a good beast or a bad,
but a beast it is. A nation's much too big for refined feelings and
affections. It must be powerful or out of the way, or down it goes. When
a nation's dead you may love it; but I don't see the use of dying to be
loved. My aim for my country is to have the land respected. For that
purpose we must have power; for power wealth; for wealth industry; for
industry internal peace: therefore no agitation, no artificial divisions.
All's plain in history and fact, so long as we do not obtrude
sentimentalism. Nothing mixes well with that stuff--except poetical
ideas!'

Contrary to her anticipation, Cecilia was thrown more into companionship
with Mr. Tuckham than with Mr. Austin; and though it often vexed her, she
acknowledged that she derived a benefit from his robust antagonism of
opinion. And Italy had grown tasteless to her. She could hardly simulate
sufficient curiosity to serve for a vacant echo to Mr. Austin's historic
ardour. Pliny the Younger might indeed be the model of a gentleman of old
Rome; there might be a scholarly pleasure in calculating, as Mr. Austin
did, the length of time it took Pliny to journey from the city to his
paternal farm, or villa overlooking the lake, or villa overlooking the
bay, and some abstruse fun in the tender ridicule of his readings of his
poems to fri