of Getting-on,” or “Britannia of the Market.”  The Athenians had an “Athena Agoraia,” or Athena of the Market; but she was a subordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the principal type of ours.  And all your great architectural works are, of course, built to her.  It is long since you built a great cathedral; and how you would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathedral on the top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an Acropolis!  But your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; your railroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable; your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires! your harbour-piers; your warehouses; your exchanges!—­all these are built to your great Goddess of “Getting-on”; and she has formed, and will continue to form your architecture, as long as you worship her; and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to her; you know far better than I.

There might, indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably good architecture for Exchanges—­that is to say, if there were any heroism in the fact or deed of exchange which might be typically carved on the outside of your building.  For, you know, all beautiful architecture must be adorned with sculpture or painting; and for sculpture or painting, you must have a subject.  And hitherto it has been a received opinion among the nations of the world that the only right subjects for either, were heroisms of some sort.  Even on his pots and his flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an Apollo slaying serpents, or Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and earthborn despondencies.  On his temples, the Greek put contests of great warriors in founding states, or of gods with evil spirits.  On his houses and temples alike, the Christian put carvings of angels conquering devils; or of hero-martyrs exchanging this world for another:  subject inappropriate, I think, to our manner of exchange here.  And the Master of Christians not only left His followers without any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the outside of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of His dislike of affairs of exchange within them.[216] And yet there might surely be a heroism in such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, not impious.  The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has never been supposed to be in any wise consistent with the practice of supplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that of quartering one’s self upon them for food, and stripping them of their clothes.  Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but the selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any colour of magnanimity.  Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothing the naked should ever become base businesses, even when engaged in on a large scale.  If one could contrive to attach the notion of conquest to them anyhow! so that, supposing