had no name, but which was native to the town, and in the valley of Ste.
Engrace, where is that great wood which shuts off all the world, they
make their cheese of ewe's milk and sell it in Tardets, which is their
only livelihood. They make a cheese in Port-Salut which is a very subtle
cheese, and there is a cheese of Limburg, and I know not how many
others, or rather I know them, but you have had enough: for a little
cheese goes a long way. No man is a glutton on cheese.

What other cheese has great holes in it like Gruyere, or what other is
as round as a cannon-ball like that cheese called Dutch? which reminds
me:--

Talking of Dutch cheese. Do you not notice how the intimate mind of
Europe is reflected in cheese? For in the centre of Europe, and where
Europe is most active, I mean in Britain and in Gaul and in Northern
Italy, and in the valley of the Rhine--nay, to some extent in Spain (in
her Pyrenean valleys at least)--there flourishes a vast burgeoning of
cheese, infinite in variety, one in goodness. But as Europe fades away
under the African wound which Spain suffered or the Eastern barbarism of
the Elbe, what happens to cheese? It becomes very flat and similar. You
can quote six cheeses perhaps which the public power of Christendom has
founded outside the limits of its ancient Empire--but not more than six.
I will quote you 253 between the Ebro and the Grampians, between
Brindisi and the Irish Channel.

I do not write vainly. It is a profound thing.