s, 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 there were anywhere an obstinate
race, who