are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the days of its first sea kings; and also the compassion and the joy that are woven into the innermost fabric of every great imaginative spirit, born now in countries that have lived by the Christian faith with any courage or truth.  And the picture contains also, for us, just this which its maker had in him to give; and can convey it to us, just so far as we are of the temper in which it must be received.  It is didactic if we are worthy to be taught, no otherwise.  The pure heart, it will make more pure; the thoughtful, more thoughtful.  It has in it no words for the reckless or the base.

  [199] The Flamboyant Architecture of the Valley of the Somme, a
  lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, January 29, 1869.

  [200] The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west
  end of Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery,
  and enriched with a border of “twisted eglantine.” [Ruskin.]

  [201] Jeremiah xxxi, 29.

TRAFFIC

“Traffic” is the second of the three lectures published May, 1866, in the volume entitled The Crown of Wild Olive.  All these lectures were delivered in the years 1864 and 1865, but the one here printed was earliest.  The occasion on which Ruskin addressed the people of Bradford is made sufficiently clear from the opening sentences.  The lecture is important as emphasizing in a popular way some of his most characteristic economic theories.

TRAFFIC[202]

My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here among your hills that I might talk to you about this Exchange you are going to build:  but, earnestly and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to do nothing of the kind.  I cannot talk, or at least can say very little, about this same Exchange.  I must talk of quite other things, though not willingly;—­I could not deserve your pardon, if, when you invited me to speak on one subject, I wilfully spoke on another.  But I cannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not care; and most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that I do not care about this Exchange of yours.

If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had answered, “I won’t come, I don’t care about the Exchange of Bradford,” you would have been justly offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt a carelessness.  So I have come down, hoping that you will patiently let me tell you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I now remain silent, when formerly I should have caught at the opportunity of speaking to a gracious audience.