One of Our Conquerors, v1

ed for a semblance of it, in exclaiming, somewhat royally, a

and coloured homely with the greensward about it, the pines beside it, the clouds above it. Not many palaces would be reckoned as larger. The folds and swells and stream of the building along the roll of ground, had an appearance of an enormous banner on the wind. Nataly looked. Her next look was at Colney Durance. She sent the expected nods to Victor's carriage. S

or an eight-feet plunge; a punt and small row-boat of elegant build hard by. Green ran the banks about, and a beechwood fringed with birches curtained the Northward length: morning sun and evening had a fair face of water to paint. Saw man ever the like for pleasing a poetical damsel? So was Miss Fredi, the coldest of the party hitherto, and dreaming a preference of 'old places' like Creckholt and Craye Farm, 'captured to be enraptured,' quite according to man's ideal of his beneficence to the sex. She pressed the hand of her young French governess, Louise de Seilles. As in ever

n an arm; 'and if they head after her into the water, I back her to leave them puffing; she's a dolphin. That water has three spr

love?' said Lady Grace, with the time

accumulation of t

y asked by the wife of

al lady beset with

sh; don't listen

g frames, in a serious tone, to love; love everybody, everything; violently and universally love; and so without intermission pay out the fat created by a rapid assimilation of nutriment. Obeseness is the most sensitive of our ailme

ad gripped him with the fell satiric itch; and it is a passion to sting and tear, on rational grounds. His face meanwhile, which had points of the han

ike 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-0the 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 runnin

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;

ortunities. 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 edge and plunged them in it, to writhe patriotically; and although it may be said, that t

. He was punished, half way to frenzy behind his placable demeanour, by having Dr. Schlesien for chorus. And here again, it was the unbefitting, not the person, which stirred his wrath. A German on English soil should remember the dues of a guest. At the same time, Colney said things to snare the acclamation of an obs

ied with observation of the bearing of Lady Grace Halley toward Mr. Victor Radnor; which displeased her on behalf of Mrs. Victor; she was besides hostile by race and class to an aristocratic assumption of licence. Sparing Colney, she with some scorn condemned Mr. Pempton for allowing his country to be ridicul

saying in his many-fathom bass, with an eye on Victor: 'At

ted in view of the spread of pic-nic provision beneath the great glass dome, as to whether it might be, that these English were on another start out of the dust in vigorous commercial enterprise, under leadership of one of their chance masterly minds-merchant, in this instance:

dy Grace Halley for the talkers. A gusty bosom of sleet overhung the dome, rattled on it, and rolling We

is Quatorze for pe

a magnified Bench of Judges at t

d flew on a whirl from

ace rejected any play

rventions of the counte

pure coin was offered

claiming, that he had s

the groupin

t Fenellan called 'his chafer tones,' that her looks were often given him in gratitude, for the mere sound. Nataly also had her sense of safety in acquiescing to such a voice coming from such a garb. Consequently, whenever Fenellan and Colne

axon; a still glowing brand amid the ashes of the Heptarchy hearthstone; who had a song, The Marigolds, which he would troll out for you anywhere, on any occasion. To have so near to the metropolis one from the centre of the venerable rotundity of the country, was rare. Victor exclaimed 'Come!' in ravishment over the picturesqueness of a neighbour carrying imagination away to the f

the suburb,' murmured Coln

sir,' said Mr. Sowerby; and Vict

e one outside is heard fingering the handle nigh midn

o you will not let us be lonely

Sound of a subterranean roar, with a blast at the orifice,

. Nesta smiled o

ff from neighbours, in a house like this; and they

nd Colney

ce at a

s in a

in doing which, he scattered to vapour the leaden incubi they had been upon his flatter moods of late. 'No, but it's a

d her smile

e dear soul wants time to compose

I could soon be reco

acres . . . in all at present three hundred and

s, not paying. We shall be having to gamble

o much as jest

e lady played it off in a shadowy pout and shrug while

e size, if as much. Large enough when we're not crowded out with

nt on here,

does not flow, causes us to speculate. The lady resumed: 'I value the favour. We're in a horsey

he other, defects common to the lower species of the race, admitting a superior personal quality or two; which might be pleaded in extenuation; and if the apology proved too effective,

earable, as the one of the party who was not perpetually at the gape in laudation. Colney was heard to say: 'No doubt: the German is the race the least mixed

as shrug under fleabite to the in

was prese

Latin. I must beg of you you write it down. I

!' Colney shrugge

rejoined in kindness, making his voice a mus

houses, to emp

to live in,

ng enough to

you . . .

not Hohenz

d. I say wid you, not Hohenzollerns you build! But you shall look above: Ey

en do we reac

an that we do not want ins

indeed. You have th

stry, Scholarship, B

fed a tempest of

the Teutonic block,' Colney s

ight have credited him wi

us in sticking at

g of their swallow

nne

r the Teutonic thrapple! But he

n excellent good fellow; better up in politics than any man I know; understands music; means well, y

ves of Academe, he may swing his ferule pick

at a recognized antag

ifting the German

xercise hi

his enterprise laid such hold of him that the smallest of obstacles had a villanous aspect; and when, as anticipated, Colney and Fenellan were sultry flies for whomsoever they could fret, he was blind to the reading of absurdities which caused Fredi's eyes to stream and Lady Grace beside him to stand awhile and laugh out her fit. Young Sowerby appeared forgiving enough-he was a perfect gentleman: but Fredi's appalling sense of fun must try him hard. And those young fellows are often more wounded by a girl's

s in her bubbling animation: she meant the recalling

f to Paris; went to test the last inventions:-French brains are always alert:-and in fact, those kitchen-ranges, gas and coal, and the apparatus for warming

ive. And, as when an inoffensive wayfarer has chanced to set foot near a wasp's nest, o

andine !' Whoever doubt

ing Armandine, knew no

elands! Merely that? Much more:-if Nataly's coldness to the place would but allow him to form an estimate of how much. At the same time, being in the grasp of his present disappointment, he perceived a meanness in the result, that was astonishing and afflicting. He had not ever previously felt imagination starving at the vision of success. Victor had yet to learn, that the man with a material object in aim, is the man of his object; and the nearer to his mark, often the farther is he from a sober self; he is more the arrow of his bow th

, on the descent to the terrace. Little Skepsey hove in sig