Section 1
AND what a strange unprecedented1 thing was that cabinet council at which I was present, the council that was held two days later in Melmount’s bungalow2, and which convened3 the conference to frame the constitution of the World State. I was there because it was convenient for me to stay with Melmount. I had nowhere to go particularly, and there was no one at his bungalow, to which his broken ankle confined him, but a secretary and a valet to help him to begin his share of the enormous labors4 that evidently lay before the rulers of the world. I wrote shorthand, and as there was not even a phonograph available, I went in so soon as his ankle had been dressed, and sat at his desk to write at his dictation. It is characteristic of the odd slackness that went with the spasmodic violence of the old epoch5, that the secretary could not use shorthand and that there was no telephone whatever in the place. Every message had to be taken to the village post-office in that grocer’s shop at Menton, half a mile away. . . . So I sat in the back of Melmount’s room, his desk had been thrust aside, and made such memoranda6 as were needed. At that time his room seemed to me the most beautifully furnished in the world, and I could identify now the vivid cheerfulness of the chintz of the sofa on which the great statesman lay just in front of me, the fine rich paper, the red sealing-wax, the silver equipage of the desk I used. I know now that my presence in that room was a strange and remarkable7 thing, the open door, even the coming and going of Parker the secretary, innovations. In the old days a cabinet council was a secret conclave8, secrecy9 and furtiveness10 were in the texture11 of all public life. In the old days everybody was always keeping something back from somebody, being wary12 and cunning, prevaricating13, misleading — for the most part for no reason at all. Almost unnoticed, that secrecy had dropped out of life.
I close my eyes and see those men again, hear their deliberating voices. First I see them a little diffusely14 in the cold explicitness15 of daylight, and then concentrated and drawn16 together amidst the shadow and mystery about shaded lamps. Integral to this and very clear is the memory of biscuit crumbs17 and a drop of spilt water, that at first stood shining upon and then sank into the green table-cloth . . . .
I remember particularly the figure of Lord Adisham. He came to the bungalow a day before the others, because he was Melmount’s personal friend. Let me describe this statesman to you, this one of the fifteen men who made the last war. He was the youngest member of the Government, and an altogether pleasant and sunny man of forty. He had a clear profile to his clean gray face, a smiling eye, a friendly, careful voice upon his thin, clean-shaven lips, an easy disabusing18 manner. He had the perfect quality of a man who had fallen easily into a place prepared for him. He had the temperament19 of what we used to call a philosopher — an indifferent, that is to say. The Change had caught him at his week-end recreation, fly-fishing; and, indeed, he said, I remember, that he recovered to find himself with his head within a yard of the water’s brim. In times of crisis Lord Adisham invariably went fly-fishing at the week-end to keep his mind in tone, and when there was no crisis then there was nothing he liked so much to do as fly-fishing, and so, of course, as there was nothing to prevent it, he fished. He came resolved, among other things, to give up fly-fishing altogether. I was present when he came to Melmount, and heard him say as much; and by a more naive20 route it was evident that he had arrived at the same scheme of intention as my master. I left them to talk, but afterward21 I came back to take down their long telegrams to their coming colleagues. He was, no doubt, as profoundly affected23 as Melmount by the Change, but his tricks of civility and irony24 and acceptable humor had survived the Change, and he expressed his altered attitude, his expanded emotions, in a quaint25 modification26 of the old-time man-of-the-world style, with excessive moderation, with a trained horror of the enthusiasm that swayed him.
These fifteen men who ruled the British Empire were curiously27 unlike anything I had expected, and I watched them intently whenever my services were not in request. They made a peculiar30 class at that time, these English politicians and statesmen, a class that has now completely passed away. In some respects they were unlike the statesmen of any other region of the world, and I do not find that any really adequate account remains31 of them. . . . Perhaps you are a reader of the old books. If so, you will find them rendered with a note of hostile exaggeration by Dickens in “Bleak House,” with a mingling32 of gross flattery and keen ridicule33 by Disraeli, who ruled among them accidentally by misunderstanding them and pleasing the court, and all their assumptions are set forth34, portentously35, perhaps, but truthfully, so far as people of the “permanent official” class saw them, in the novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward22. All these books are still in this world and at the disposal of the curious, and in addition the philosopher Bagehot and the picturesque36 historian Macaulay give something of their method of thinking, the novelist Thackeray skirts the seamy side of their social life, and there are some good passages of irony, personal descriptions, and reminiscence to be found in the “Twentieth Century Garner” from the pens of such writers, for example, as Sidney Low. But a picture of them as a whole is wanting. Then they were too near and too great; now, very rapidly, they have become incomprehensible.
We common people of the old time based our conception of our statesmen almost entirely37 on the caricatures that formed the most powerful weapon in political controversy38. Like almost every main feature of the old condition of things these caricatures were an unanticipated development, they were a sort of parasitic39 outgrowth from, which had finally altogether replaced, the thin and vague aspirations40 of the original democratic ideals. They presented not only the personalities41 who led our public life, but the most sacred structural42 conceptions of that life, in ludicrous, vulgar, and dishonorable aspects that in the end came near to destroying entirely all grave and honorable emotion or motive43 toward the State. The state of Britain was represented nearly always by a red-faced, purse-proud farmer with an enormous belly44, that fine dream of freedom, the United States, by a cunning, lean-faced rascal45 in striped trousers and a blue coat. The chief ministers of state were pickpockets46, washerwomen, clowns, whales, asses47, elephants, and what not, and issues that affected the welfare of millions of men were dressed and judged like a rally in some idiotic48 pantomime. A tragic49 war in South Africa, that wrecked50 many thousand homes, impoverished51 two whole lands, and brought death and disablement to fifty thousand men, was presented as a quite comical quarrel between a violent queer being named Chamberlain, with an eyeglass, an orchid52, and a short temper, and “old Kroojer,” an obstinate53 and very cunning old man in a shocking bad hat. The conflict was carried through in a mood sometimes of brutish irritability54 and sometimes of lax slovenliness55, the merry peculator56 plied57 his trade congenially in that asinine58 squabble, and behind these fooleries and masked by them, marched Fate — until at last the clowning of the booth opened and revealed — hunger and suffering, brands burning and swords and shame. . . . These men had come to fame and power in that atmosphere, and to me that day there was the oddest suggestion in them of actors who have suddenly laid aside grotesque59 and foolish parts; the paint was washed from their faces, the posing put aside.
Even when the presentation was not frankly60 grotesque and degrading it was entirely misleading. When I read of Laycock, for example, there arises a picture of a large, active, if a little wrong-headed, intelligence in a compact heroic body, emitting that “Goliath” speech of his that did so much to precipitate61 hostilities62, it tallies63 not at all with the stammering64, high-pitched, slightly bald, and very conscience-stricken personage I saw, nor with Melmount’s contemptuous first description of him. I doubt if the world at large will ever get a proper vision of those men as they were before the Change. Each year they pass more and more incredibly beyond our intellectual sympathy. Our estrangement65 cannot, indeed, rob them of their portion in the past, but it will rob them of any effect of reality. The whole of their history becomes more and more foreign, more and more like some queer barbaric drama played in a forgotten tongue. There they strut66 through their weird67 metamorphoses of caricature, those premiers68 and presidents, their height preposterously69 exaggerated by political buskins, their faces covered by great resonant70 inhuman71 masks, their voices couched in the foolish idiom of public utterance72, disguised beyond any semblance73 to sane74 humanity, roaring and squeaking75 through the public press. There it stands, this incomprehensible faded show, a thing left on one side, and now still and deserted76 by any interest, its many emptinesses as inexplicable77 now as the cruelties of medieval Venice, the theology of old Byzantium. And they ruled and influenced the lives of nearly a quarter of mankind, these politicians, their clownish conflicts swayed the world, made mirth perhaps, made excitement, and permitted — infinite misery78.
I saw these men quickened indeed by the Change, but still wearing the queer clothing of the old time, the manners and conventions of the old time; if they had disengaged themselves from the outlook of the old time they still had to refer back to it constantly as a common starting-point. My refreshed intelligence was equal to that, so that I think I did indeed see them. There was Gorrell-Browning, the Chancellor79 of the Duchy; I remember him as a big round-faced man, the essential vanity and foolishness of whose expression, whose habit of voluminous platitudinous80 speech, triumphed absurdly once or twice over the roused spirit within. He struggled with it, he burlesqued81 himself, and laughed. Suddenly he said simply, intensely — it was a moment for every one of clean, clear pain, “I have been a vain and self-indulgent and presumptuous82 old man. I am of little use here. I have given myself to politics and intrigues83, and life is gone from me.” Then for a long time he sat still. There was Carton, the Lord Chancellor, a white-faced man with understanding, he had a heavy, shaven face that might have stood among the busts85 of the Caesars, a slow, elaborating voice, with self-indulgent, slightly oblique86, and triumphant87 lips, and a momentary88, voluntary, humorous twinkle. “We have to forgive,” he said. “We have to forgive — even ourselves.”
These two were at the top corner of the table, so that I saw their faces well. Madgett, the Home Secretary, a smaller man with wrinkled eyebrows89 and a frozen smile on his thin wry90 mouth, came next to Carton; he contributed little to the discussion save intelligent comments, and when the electric lights above glowed out, the shadows deepened queerly in his eye-sockets and gave him the quizzical expression of an ironical91 goblin. Next him was that great peer, the Earl of Richover, whose self-indulgent indolence had accepted the role of a twentieth-century British Roman patrician92 of culture, who had divided his time almost equally between his jockeys, politics, and the composition of literary studies in the key of his role. “We have done nothing worth doing,” he said. “As for me, I have cut a figure!” He reflected — no doubt on his ample patrician years, on the fine great houses that had been his setting, the teeming93 race-courses that had roared his name, the enthusiastic meetings he had fed with fine hopes, the futile94 Olympian beginnings. . . . “I have been a fool,” he said compactly. They heard him in a sympathetic and respectful silence. Gurker, the Chancellor of the Exchequer95, was partially96 occulted, so far as I was concerned, by the back of Lord Adisham. Ever and again Gurker protruded97 into the discussion, swaying forward, a deep throaty voice, a big nose, a coarse mouth with a drooping98 everted lower lip, eyes peering amidst folds and wrinkles. He made his confession99 for his race. “We Jews,” he said, “have gone through the system of this world, creating nothing, consolidating100 many things, destroying much. Our racial self-conceit has been monstrous101. We seem to have used our ample coarse intellectuality for no other purpose than to develop and master and maintain the convention of property, to turn life into a sort of mercantile chess and spend our winnings grossly. . . . We have had no sense of service to mankind. Beauty which is godhead — we made it a possession.”
These men and these sayings particularly remain in my memory. Perhaps, indeed, I wrote them down at the time, but that I do not now remember. How Sir Digby Privet, Revel102, Markheimer, and the others sat I do not now recall; they came in as voices, interruptions, imperfectly assigned comments . . . .
One got a queer impression that except perhaps for Gurker or Revel these men had not particularly wanted the power they held; had desired to do nothing very much in the positions they had secured. They had found themselves in the cabinet, and until this moment of illumination they had not been ashamed; but they had made no ungentlemanly fuss about the matter. Eight of that fifteen came from the same school, had gone through an entirely parallel education; some Greek linguistics103, some elementary mathematics, some emasculated “science,” a little history, a little reading in the silent or timidly orthodox English literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, all eight had imbibed104 the same dull gentlemanly tradition of behavior; essentially105 boyish, unimaginative — with neither keen swords nor art in it, a tradition apt to slobber into sentiment at a crisis and make a great virtue106 of a simple duty rather clumsily done. None of these eight had made any real experiments with life, they had lived in blinkers, they had been passed from nurse to governess, from governess to preparatory school, from Eton to Oxford107, from Oxford to the politico-social routine. Even their vices29 and lapses108 had been according to certain conceptions of good form. They had all gone to the races surreptitiously from Eton, had all cut up to town from Oxford to see life — music-hall life — had all come to heel again. Now suddenly they discovered their limitations . . . .
“What are we to do?” asked Melmount. “We have awakened109; this empire in our hands . . . .” I know this will seem the most fabulous110 of all the things I have to tell of the old order, but, indeed, I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears. It is a fact that this group of men who constituted the Government of one-fifth of the habitable land of the earth, who ruled over a million of armed men, who had such navies as mankind had never seen before, whose empire of nations, tongues, peoples still dazzles in these greater days, had no common idea whatever of what they meant to do with the world. They had been a Government for three long years, and before the Change came to them it had never even occurred to them that it was necessary to have no common idea. There was no common idea at all. That great empire was no more than a thing adrift, an aimless thing that ate and drank and slept and bore arms, and was inordinately111 proud of itself because it had chanced to happen. It had no plan, no intention; it meant nothing at all. And the other great empires adrift, perilously112 adrift like marine113 mines, were in the self-same case. Absurd as a British cabinet council must seem to you now, it was no whit84 more absurd than the controlling ganglion, autocratic council, president’s committee, or what not, of each of its blind rivals . . . .
Section 2
I remember as one thing that struck me very forcibly at the time, the absence of any discussion, any difference of opinion, about the broad principles of our present state. These men had lived hitherto in a system of conventions and acquired motives114, loyalty115 to a party, loyalty to various secret agreements and understandings, loyalty to the Crown; they had all been capable of the keenest attention to precedence, all capable of the most complete suppression of subversive116 doubts and inquiries117, all had their religious emotions under perfect control. They had seemed protected by invisible but impenetrable barriers from all the heady and destructive speculations118, the socialistic, republican, and communistic theories that one may still trace through the literature of the last days of the comet. But now it was as if the very moment of the awakening119 those barriers and defences had vanished, as if the green vapors120 had washed through their minds and dissolved and swept away a hundred once rigid121 boundaries and obstacles. They had admitted and assimilated at once all that was good in the ill-dressed propagandas that had clamored so vehemently122 and vainly at the doors of their minds in the former days. It was exactly like the awakening from an absurd and limiting dream. They had come out together naturally and inevitably123 upon the broad daylight platform of obvious and reasonable agreement upon which we and all the order of our world now stand.
Let me try to give the chief things that had vanished from their minds. There was, first, the ancient system of “ownership” that made such an extraordinary tangle124 of our administration of the land upon which we lived. In the old time no one believed in that as either just or ideally convenient, but every one accepted it. The community which lived upon the land was supposed to have waived125 its necessary connection with the land, except in certain limited instances of highway and common. All the rest of the land was cut up in the maddest way into patches and oblongs and triangles of various sizes between a hundred square miles and a few acres, and placed under the nearly absolute government of a series of administrators126 called landowners. They owned the land almost as a man now owns his hat; they bought it and sold it, and cut it up like cheese or ham; they were free to ruin it, or leave it waste, or erect127 upon it horrible and devastating128 eyesores. If the community needed a road or a tramway, if it wanted a town or a village in any position, nay129, even if it wanted to go to and fro, it had to do so by exorbitant130 treaties with each of the monarchs131 whose territory was involved. No man could find foothold on the face of the earth until he had paid toll132 and homage133 to one of them. They had practically no relations and no duties to the nominal134, municipal, or national Government amidst whose larger areas their own dominions135 lay. . . . This sounds, I know, like a lunatic’s dream, but mankind was that lunatic; and not only in the old countries of Europe and Asia, where this system had arisen out of the rational delegation136 of local control to territorial137 magnates, who had in the universal baseness of those times at last altogether evaded138 and escaped their duties, did it obtain, but the “new countries,” as we called them then — the United States of America, the Cape139 Colony, Australia, and New Zealand — spent much of the nineteenth century in the frantic140 giving away of land for ever to any casual person who would take it. Was there coal, was there petroleum141 or gold, was there rich soil or harborage, or the site for a fine city, these obsessed142 and witless Governments cried out for scramblers, and a stream of shabby, tricky143, and violent adventurers set out to found a new section of the landed aristocracy of the world. After a brief century of hope and pride, the great republic of the United States of America, the hope as it was deemed of mankind, became for the most part a drifting crowd of landless men; landlords and railway lords, food lords (for the land is food) and mineral lords ruled its life, gave it Universities as one gave coins to a mendicant144, and spent its resources upon such vain, tawdry, and foolish luxuries as the world had never seen before. Here was a thing none of these statesmen before the Change would have regarded as anything but the natural order of the world, which not one of them now regarded as anything but the mad and vanished illusion of a period of dementia.
And as it was with the question of the land, so was it also with a hundred other systems and institutions and complicated and disingenuous145 factors in the life of man. They spoke146 of trade, and I realized for the first time there could be buying and selling that was no loss to any man; they spoke of industrial organization, and one saw it under captains who sought no base advantages. The haze147 of old associations, of personal entanglements148 and habitual149 recognitions had been dispelled150 from every stage and process of the social training of men. Things long hidden appeared discovered with an amazing clearness and nakedness. These men who had awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old muddle151 of schools and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling152, half-figurative, half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of weakening and confusing suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride and honor of adolescence153 doubted and stumbled and fell, became nothing but a curious and pleasantly faded memory. “There must be a common training of the young,” said Richover; “a frank initiation154. We have not so much educated them as hidden things from them, and set traps. And it might have been so easy — it can all be done so easily.”
That hangs in my memory as the refrain of that council, “It can all be done so easily,” but when they said it then, it came to my ears with a quality of enormous refreshment155 and power. It can all be done so easily, given frankness, given courage. Time was when these platitudes156 had the freshness and wonder of a gospel.
In this enlarged outlook the war with the Germans — that mythical157, heroic, armed female, Germany, had vanished from men’s imaginations — was a mere158 exhausted159 episode. A truce160 had already been arranged by Melmount, and these ministers, after some marveling reminiscences, set aside the matter of peace as a mere question of particular arrangements. . . . The whole scheme of the world’s government had become fluid and provisional in their minds, in small details as in great, the unanalyzable tangle of wards161 and vestries, districts and municipalities, counties, states, boards, and nations, the interlacing, overlapping162, and conflicting authorities, the felt of little interests and claims, in which an innumerable and insatiable multitude of lawyers, agents, managers, bosses, organizers lived like fleas163 in a dirty old coat, the web of the conflicts, jealousies164, heated patchings up and jobbings apart, of the old order — they flung it all on one side.
“What are the new needs?” said Melmount. “This muddle is too rotten to handle. We’re beginning again. Well, let us begin afresh.”
Section 3
“Let us begin afresh!” This piece of obvious common sense seemed then to me instinct with courage, the noblest of words. My heart went out to him as he spoke. It was, indeed, that day as vague as it was valiant165; we did not at all see the forms of what we were thus beginning. All that we saw was the clear inevitableness that the old order should end . . . .
And then in a little space of time mankind in halting but effectual brotherhood166 was moving out to make its world anew. Those early years, those first and second decades of the new epoch, were in their daily detail a time of rejoicing toil167; one saw chiefly one’s own share in that, and little of the whole. It is only now that I look back at it all from these ripe years, from this high tower, that I see the dramatic sequence of its changes, see the cruel old confusions of the ancient time become clarified, simplified, and dissolve and vanish away. Where is that old world now? Where is London, that somber168 city of smoke and drifting darkness, full of the deep roar and haunting music of disorder169, with its oily, shining, mud-rimmed, barge-crowded river, its black pinnacles170 and blackened dome171, its sad wildernesses172 of smut-grayed houses, its myriads173 of draggled prostitutes, its millions of hurrying clerks? The very leaves upon its trees were foul174 with greasy175 black defilements. Where is lime-white Paris, with its green and disciplined foliage176, its hard unflinching tastefulness, its smartly organized viciousness, and the myriads of workers, noisily shod, streaming over the bridges in the gray cold light of dawn. Where is New York, the high city of clangor and infuriated energy, wind swept and competition swept, its huge buildings jostling one another and straining ever upward for a place in the sky, the fallen pitilessly overshadowed. Where are its lurking177 corners of heavy and costly178 luxury, the shameful179 bludgeoning bribing180 vice28 of its ill ruled underways, and all the gaunt extravagant181 ugliness of its strenuous182 life? And where now is Philadelphia, with its innumerable small and isolated183 homes, and Chicago with its interminable blood-stained stockyards, its polyglot184 underworld of furious discontent.
All these vast cities have given way and gone, even as my native Potteries185 and the Black Country have gone, and the lives that were caught, crippled, starved, and maimed amidst their labyrinths186, their forgotten and neglected maladjustments, and their vast, inhuman, ill-conceived industrial machinery187 have escaped — to life. Those cities of growth and accident are altogether gone, never a chimney smokes about our world to-day, and the sound of the weeping of children who toiled188 and hungered, the dull despair of overburdened women, the noise of brute189 quarrels in alleys190, all shameful pleasures and all the ugly grossness of wealthy pride have gone with them, with the utter change in our lives. As I look back into the past I see a vast exultant191 dust of house-breaking and removal rise up into the clear air that followed the hour of the green vapors, I live again the Year of Tents, the Year of Scaffolding, and like the triumph of a new theme in a piece of music — the great cities of our new days arise. Come Caerlyon and Armedon, the twin cities of lower England, with the winding192 summer city of the Thames between, and I see the gaunt dirt of old Edinburgh die to rise again white and tall beneath the shadow of her ancient hill; and Dublin too, reshaped, returning enriched, fair, spacious193, the city of rich laughter and warm hearts, gleaming gaily194 in a shaft195 of sunlight through the soft warm rain. I see the great cities America has planned and made; the Golden City, with ever-ripening fruit along its broad warm ways, and the bell-glad City of a Thousand Spires196. I see again as I have seen, the city of theaters and meeting-places, the City of the Sunlight Bight, and the new city that is still called Utah; and dominated by its observatory197 dome and the plain and dignified198 lines of the university facade199 upon the cliff, Martenabar the great white winter city of the upland snows. And the lesser200 places, too, the townships, the quiet resting-places, villages half forest with a brawl201 of streams down their streets, villages laced with avenues of cedar202, villages of garden, of roses and wonderful flowers and the perpetual humming of bees. And through all the world go our children, our sons the old world would have made into servile clerks and shopmen, plough drudges203 and servants; our daughters who were erst anaemic drudges, prostitutes, sluts, anxiety-racked mothers or sere204, repining failures; they go about this world glad and brave, learning, living, doing, happy and rejoicing, brave and free. I think of them wandering in the clear quiet of the ruins of Rome, among the tombs of Egypt or the temples of Athens, of their coming to Mainington and its strange happiness, to Orba and the wonder of its white and slender tower. . . . But who can tell of the fullness and pleasure of life, who can number all our new cities in the world?— cities made by the loving hands of men for living men, cities men weep to enter, so fair they are, so gracious and so kind . . . .
Some vision surely of these things must have been vouchsafed205 me as I sat there behind Melmount’s couch, but now my knowledge of accomplished206 things has mingled207 with and effaced208 my expectations. Something indeed I must have foreseen — or else why was my heart so glad?
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unprecedented
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bungalow
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convened
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| 召开( convene的过去式 )； 召集； （为正式会议而）聚集； 集合 | |
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labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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epoch
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memoranda
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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conclave
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secrecy
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furtiveness
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| 偷偷摸摸，鬼鬼祟祟 | |
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texture
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wary
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prevaricating
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diffusely
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explicitness
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drawn
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crumbs
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disabusing
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temperament
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naive
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afterward
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ward
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affected
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irony
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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26
modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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27
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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28
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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29
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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30
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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31
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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32
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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33
ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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34
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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35
portentously
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36
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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37
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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38
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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39
parasitic
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| adj.寄生的 | |
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40
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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41
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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42
structural
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| adj.构造的，组织的，建筑（用）的 | |
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43
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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44
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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45
rascal
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| n.流氓；不诚实的人 | |
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46
pickpockets
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| n.扒手( pickpocket的名词复数 ) | |
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47
asses
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| n. 驴，愚蠢的人，臀部 adv. (常用作后置)用于贬损或骂人 | |
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48
idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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49
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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50
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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51
impoverished
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|
| adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化 | |
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52
orchid
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| n.兰花，淡紫色 | |
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53
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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54
irritability
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| n.易怒 | |
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55
slovenliness
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56
peculator
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| n.挪用公款者 | |
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57
plied
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的过去式和过去分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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58
asinine
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| adj.愚蠢的 | |
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59
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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60
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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61
precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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62
hostilities
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| n.战争；敌意(hostility的复数)；敌对状态；战事 | |
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63
tallies
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| n.账( tally的名词复数 )；符合；（计数的）签；标签v.计算，清点( tally的第三人称单数 )；加标签（或标记）于；（使）符合；（使）吻合 | |
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64
stammering
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的现在分词 ) | |
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65
estrangement
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| n.疏远，失和，不和 | |
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66
strut
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| v.肿胀，鼓起；大摇大摆地走；炫耀；支撑；撑开；n.高视阔步；支柱，撑杆 | |
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67
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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68
premiers
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| n.总理，首相( premier的名词复数 )；首席官员， | |
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69
preposterously
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| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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70
resonant
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| adj.(声音)洪亮的，共鸣的 | |
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71
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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72
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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73
semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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74
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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75
squeaking
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的现在分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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76
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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77
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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78
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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79
chancellor
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| n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长 | |
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80
platitudinous
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|
| adj.平凡的，陈腐的 | |
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81
burlesqued
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| v.（嘲弄地）模仿，（通过模仿）取笑( burlesque的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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82
presumptuous
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| adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的 | |
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83
intrigues
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| n.密谋策划( intrigue的名词复数 )；神秘气氛；引人入胜的复杂情节v.搞阴谋诡计( intrigue的第三人称单数 )；激起…的好奇心 | |
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84
whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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85
busts
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| 半身雕塑像( bust的名词复数 )； 妇女的胸部； 胸围； 突击搜捕 | |
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86
oblique
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| adj.斜的，倾斜的，无诚意的，不坦率的 | |
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87
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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88
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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89
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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90
wry
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| adj.讽刺的；扭曲的 | |
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91
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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92
patrician
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| adj.贵族的，显贵的；n.贵族；有教养的人；罗马帝国的地方官 | |
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93
teeming
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|
| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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94
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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95
exchequer
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| n.财政部；国库 | |
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96
partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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97
protruded
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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98
drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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99
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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100
consolidating
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| v.（使）巩固， （使）加强( consolidate的现在分词 )；（使）合并 | |
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101
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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102
revel
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| vi.狂欢作乐，陶醉；n.作乐，狂欢 | |
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103
linguistics
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| n.语言学 | |
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104
imbibed
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| v.吸收( imbibe的过去式和过去分词 )；喝；吸取；吸气 | |
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105
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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106
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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107
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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108
lapses
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| n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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109
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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110
fabulous
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| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
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111
inordinately
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| adv.无度地，非常地 | |
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112
perilously
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| adv.充满危险地，危机四伏地 | |
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113
marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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114
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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115
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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116
subversive
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| adj.颠覆性的，破坏性的；n.破坏份子，危险份子 | |
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117
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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118
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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119
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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120
vapors
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| n.水汽，水蒸气，无实质之物( vapor的名词复数 )；自夸者；幻想 [药]吸入剂 [古]忧郁（症）v.自夸，（使）蒸发( vapor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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121
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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122
vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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123
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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124
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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125
waived
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| v.宣布放弃( waive的过去式和过去分词 )；搁置；推迟；放弃（权利、要求等） | |
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126
administrators
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| n.管理者( administrator的名词复数 )；有管理（或行政）才能的人；（由遗嘱检验法庭指定的）遗产管理人；奉派暂管主教教区的牧师 | |
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127
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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128
devastating
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| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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129
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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130
exorbitant
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| adj.过分的；过度的 | |
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131
monarchs
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| 君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 ) | |
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132
toll
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| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
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133
homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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134
nominal
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| adj.名义上的；(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
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135
dominions
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| 统治权( dominion的名词复数 )； 领土； 疆土； 版图 | |
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136
delegation
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| n.代表团；派遣 | |
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137
territorial
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| adj.领土的，领地的 | |
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138
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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139
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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140
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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141
petroleum
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| n.原油，石油 | |
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142
obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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143
tricky
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| adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的 | |
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144
mendicant
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| n.乞丐；adj.行乞的 | |
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145
disingenuous
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| adj.不诚恳的，虚伪的 | |
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146
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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147
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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148
entanglements
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| n.瓜葛( entanglement的名词复数 )；牵连；纠缠；缠住 | |
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149
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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150
dispelled
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| v.驱散，赶跑( dispel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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151
muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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152
fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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153
adolescence
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| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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154
initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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155
refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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156
platitudes
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| n.平常的话，老生常谈，陈词滥调( platitude的名词复数 )；滥套子 | |
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157
mythical
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| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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158
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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159
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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160
truce
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| n.休战，(争执，烦恼等的)缓和；v.以停战结束 | |
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161
wards
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| 区( ward的名词复数 )； 病房； 受监护的未成年者； 被人照顾或控制的状态 | |
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162
overlapping
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| adj./n.交迭（的） | |
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163
fleas
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| n.跳蚤( flea的名词复数 )；爱财如命；没好气地（拒绝某人的要求） | |
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164
jealousies
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| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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165
valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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166
brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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167
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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168
somber
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| adj.昏暗的，阴天的，阴森的，忧郁的 | |
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169
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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170
pinnacles
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| 顶峰( pinnacle的名词复数 )； 顶点； 尖顶； 小尖塔 | |
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171
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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172
wildernesses
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| 荒野( wilderness的名词复数 )； 沙漠； （政治家）在野； 不再当政（或掌权） | |
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173
myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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174
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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175
greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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176
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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177
lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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178
costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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179
shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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180
bribing
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| 贿赂 | |
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181
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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182
strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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183
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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184
polyglot
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| adj.通晓数种语言的；n.通晓多种语言的人 | |
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185
potteries
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| n.陶器( pottery的名词复数 )；陶器厂；陶土；陶器制造（术） | |
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186
labyrinths
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| 迷宫( labyrinth的名词复数 )； （文字，建筑）错综复杂的 | |
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187
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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188
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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189
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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190
alleys
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| 胡同，小巷( alley的名词复数 )； 小径 | |
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191
exultant
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| adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的 | |
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192
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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193
spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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194
gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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195
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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196
spires
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| n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 ) | |
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197
observatory
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| n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台 | |
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198
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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199
facade
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| n.(建筑物的)正面，临街正面；外表 | |
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200
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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201
brawl
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| n.大声争吵，喧嚷；v.吵架，对骂 | |
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202
cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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203
drudges
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| n.做苦工的人，劳碌的人( drudge的名词复数 ) | |
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204
sere
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| adj.干枯的；n.演替系列 | |
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205
vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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206
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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207
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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208
effaced
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| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
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