“You are right, Miss Herbert. The beauty that we do not know we may admire, but hardly love. It is like a painting that we glance at, and pass on to see something else. There is no sense of ownership about it. I have wandered, with a crippled friend by my side, through art galleries where all that was beautiful in nature and art was drawn up in a way to fascinate the eye and delight the senses. Yet my crippled friend never suffered by contrast; never felt his deformity there. Knowledge, association, friendship, love--these are the great beautifiers. The little that we can really call our own is dearer to us than all the world--is our world, in fact. An Italian sunset steals and enwraps the senses into, as it were, a third heaven. A London fog is one of the most hideous things in this world; yet a genuine Londoner finds something in his native fog dear to him as the sunset to the Italian, and I confess to the barbarism myself. On our arrival the other day we were greeted by a yellow, dense, smoke-colored fog, such as London alone can produce. It was more than a year since I had seen one, and I enjoyed it. I breathed freely again, for I was at home. You will understand, then, how I appreciate your enthusiasm about Leighstone; and if Leighstone had many like Miss Herbert, I can well understand why its people should be content to stay at home.” Nellie laughed. “I am afraid, Mr. Goodal, that you have brought back something more than your taste for fogs and your homely Saxon from Italy.” “Yes, a more rooted love for my own land, a truer appreciation of my countrymen, and more ardent admiration of my fair countrywomen.” “Ah! now you are talking Italian. But, honestly, which country do you find the most interesting of all you have seen?” “My own, Miss Herbert.” “The nation of shop-keepers!” ejaculated I. “Of Magna Charta,” interposed my father, who, ready enough to condemn his age and his country himself, was Englishman enough to allow no other person to do so with impunity. “Of hearth and home, of cheerful firesides and family circles,” added Nellie. “Of work-houses and treadmills,” I growled. “Of law and order, of civil and religious liberty,” corrected my father. “Which are of very recent introduction and very insecure tenure,” added I. “They formed the corner-stone of the great charter on which our English state is built--a charter that has become our glory and the world’s envy.”