The more clearly I were to point out that such
antiquities as the Adelphi are as a magnet to the moneyed tourists of
America and Europe, the likelier would my readers be to shudder at `a
proposal which, if carried into effect, will bring discredit on all
concerned and will in some measure justify Napoleon's hitherto-
unjustified taunt that we are a nation of shopkeepers.--I am, Sir,
your obedient servant'--good! I sat down to a table and wrote out that
conclusion, and then I worked backwards, keeping well in view the idea
of ` restraint.' But that quality which is little sister to restraint,
and is yet far more repulsive to the public mind than vehemence,
emerged to misguide my pen. Irony, in fact, played the deuce. I found
myself writing that a nation which, in its ardour for beauty and its
reverence for great historic associations, has lately disbursed after
only a few months' hesitation ?250,000 to save the Crystal Palace,
where the bank holidays of millions of toilers have been spoilt by the
utter gloom and nullity of the place--a nullity and gloom that will,
however and of course, be dispelled so soon as the place is devoted to
permanent exhibitions of New Zealand pippins, Rhodesian tobacco,
Australian mutton, Canadian snow-shoes, and other glories of Empire--
might surely not be asked in vain to'--but I deleted that sentence,
and tried another in another vein.
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