Sir, you ask me what I think of the expedition to China. You must feel that it was praiseworthy, well done. You are very polite, putting a high premium upon my feelings. In your opinion, the expedition, performed under the joint banner of Queen Elizabeth and Emperor Napoleon, was nothing short of a British-French glory. Therefore, you would like to know to what extent I appreciate this glory. Since you ask, I will answer as follows: In a corner of the world there existed a man-made miracle the Winter Palace. Art has two sources., one, an ideal, whence has come European art two, fancy, whence has issued Oriental art. The Winter Palace belongs to the art of fancy. The Winter Palace, indeed, was the crystallisation of all the art that an almost superman race could have fancied. The Winter Palace was a huge-scale prototype of fancy if fancy can have a prototype. If only you can imagine an ineffable architectural structure, like a palace in the moon, a fairyland, that is the Winter Palace. If you can imagine a treasure-island, a pool of human perceptive power, expressed in the concrete form. of palaces and temples, that is the Winter Palace. It took two generations of manpower to create the Winter Palace, which subsequently went through improvement and perfection over several centuries. Great artists, poets, philosophers-they all knew about the Winter Palace. Many people at different times compared the Winter Palace to the Parthenon, the. Pyramids, the Arena, and the Notre Dame. If they could not see the Winter Palace with their own eyes, they could dream about it-as if in the gloaming they saw a breath taking masterpiece of art as they had never known before-as if there above the horizon of European civilization was towering the silhouette of Asian civilization. Now, the miracle is no morel One day, two pirates broke into it. One of them went plundering the other set every building and everything in it all ablaze! Judging by what they did, we know that the victors could degenerate into robbers. The two of them fell to dividing between themselves the spoils. What meritorious feats they had done! What a heaven-sent bonanza! One stuffed his pockets full to over followings the other filled in his trunk chockfull Theni hand in hand they made off, guffawing gloatingly. This episode reflects the history of the two brigands. Standing before the tribunal of history is one brigand named France and the other named Great Britain. Against both I protest. Incidentally, I must thank you for giving me the opportunity to make this accusation. The rulers commit crimes but the ruled do not the government becomes a robber, but the people will never. France has gained a large portion of the spoils. Now, quite naively, she thinks herself the rightful owner of the property, and she is displaying the riches of the Winter Palace! I can only hope that there will come one day when France will disburden herself of the heavy load on her conscience and cleanse herself of the crime by returning to China all the spoils taken from the Winter Palace. Sir, such is my eulogy of the expedition to China. The tone of the passage is______.