colossal ruins in Italy and elsewhere with awe and admiration; and
the discovery of a new Roman bath in any old city of our isles
sets all our antiquaries buzzing with interest."

"Then why," the shade might ask, "do you not copy an example which
you so much admire? Surely England must be much in want, either
of water, or of fuel to heat it with?"

"On the contrary, our rainfall is almost too great; our soil so
damp that we have had to invent a whole art of subsoil drainage
unknown to you; while, as for fuel, our coal-mines make us the
great fuel-exporting people of the world."

What a quiet sneer might curl the lip of a Constantine as he
replied: "Not in vain, as I said, did we call you, some fifteen
hundred years ago, the barbarians of the north. But tell me, good
barbarian, whom I know to be both brave and wise--for the fame of
your young British empire has reached us even in the realms below,
and we recognise in you, with all respect, a people more like us
Romans than any which has appeared on earth for many centuries--
how is it you have forgotten that sacred duty of keeping the
people clean, which you surely at one time learnt from us? When
your ancestors entered our armies, and rose, some of them, to be
great generals, and even emperors, like those two Teuton peasants,
Justin and Justinian, who, long after my days, reigned in my own
Constantinople: then, at least, you saw baths, and used them; and
felt, after the bath, that you were civilised men, and not
'sordidi ac foetentes,' as we used to call you when fresh out of
your bullock-waggons and cattle-pens. How is it that you have
forgotten that lesson?"