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 log hissing to the saw. Their instinct to make
use of the downright in retort, restrained as it is by a buttoned coat
of civilization, is amusing, inviting. Colney Durance allured them to
the quag's ed