dishes, upon a physical system inspired by the traditions of exercise,
and no longer relieved by the practice'--to translate from Dr. Gannius:
we are again at war with the writer's reverential tone, and we know not
what to think: except, that Mr. Durance was a Saturday meat market's
butcher in the Satiric Art.

Nesta found it pleasanter to see him than to hear of his work: which, to
her present feeling, was inhuman. As little as our native public, had
she then any sympathy for the working in the idea: she wanted throbs,
visible aims, the Christian incarnate; she would have preferred the tale
of slaughter--periodically invading all English classes as a flush from
the undrained lower, Vikings all--to frigid sterile Satire. And truly it
is not a fruit-bearing rod. Colney had to stand on the defence of it
against the damsel's charges. He thought the use of the rod, while
expressing profound regret at a difference of opinion between him and
those noble heathens, beneficial for boys; but in relation to their
seniors, and particularly for old gentlemen, he thought that the sharpest
rod to cut the skin was the sole saving of them. Insensibility to
Satire, he likened to the hard-mouthed horse; which is doomed to the
worser thing in consequence. And consequently upon the lack of it, and
of training to appreciate it, he described his country's male venerables
as being distinguishable from annuitant spinsters only in presenting
themselves forked.

'He is unsuccessful and embittered, Victor said to Nesta. 'Colney will
find in the end, that he has lost his game and soured himself by never
making concessions. Here's this absurd Serial--it fails, of course; and
then he has to say, it's because he won't tickle his English, won't enter
into a "frowzy complicity" with their tastes.'