Skelmersdale, and he looked at
Prothero as a marble angel might look at a swine in its sty. . . .
What he had now in mind was an expedition to Russia. When at last
he could sufficiently release Prothero's attention, he unfolded the
project that had been developing steadily in him since his honeymoon
experience.
He had discovered a new reason for travelling. The last country we
can see clearly, he had discovered, is our own country. It is as
hard to see one's own country as it is to see the back of one's
head. It is too much behind us, too much ourselves. But Russia is
like England with everything larger, more vivid, cruder; one felt
that directly one walked about St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg upon
its Neva was like a savage untamed London on a larger Thames; they
were seagull-haunted tidal cities, like no other capitals in Europe.
The shipping and buildings mingled in their effects. Like London it
looked over the heads of its own people to a limitless polyglot
empire. And Russia was an aristocratic land, with a middle-class
that had no pride in itself as a class; it had a British toughness
and incompetence, a British disregard of logic and meticulous care.
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