But in this matter Western Europe, at its worst—say, in one of the corridor-trains to Marseilles—is a mountain-top to a pigstye compared with the old and gorgeous East. “The Fast,” ejaculated an old Scotsman once—“the East is just a smell ! It begins at Port Said and disna stop till ye come to San Francisco, … if there !” he added after a pause. From his sweeping condemnation we must, however, exempt Japan.
Who can ever forget the bazaar smells of India, the mingled must and fust with its background of garlic and strange vices, or the still more mysterious atmospheres of China with their deep suggestion of musk ?
Naturally the air of a cold country is clearer of obnoxious vapours than that of tropical and subtropical climes, but in spite of that, the first whiff of a Tibetan monastery, like that of an Eskimo hut, grips the throat, they say, like the air over a brewing vat.
So that, after making every allowance for the favour of Nature, we are still entitled to claim that the relative purity of England, and of English cities, towns and even villages, is an artificial achievement.
I may therefore, with justice, raise a song of praise to our fathers who have had our country thus swept and garnished, swept of noxious vapours and emanations, and garnished with the
