rselves, you arm
yourselves against it in vain; the enemy and avenger will be upon you
also, unless you learn that it is not out of the mouths of the knitted
gun, or the smoothed rifle, but 'out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings' that the strength is ordained which shall 'still the enemy
and avenger.'

LECTURE II.

_TRAFFIC._

(_Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford._)

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.

In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange,--because _you_
don't; and because you know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at
the essential circumstances of the case, which you, as business men,
know perfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. You are
going to spend 30,000_l._, which to you, collectively, is nothing; the
buying a new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more important matter
of consideration to me than building a new Exchange is to you. But you
think you may as well have the right thing for your money. You know
there are a great many odd styles of architecture about; you don't want
to do anything ridiculous; you hear of me, among others, as a
respectable architectural man-milliner: and you send for me, that I may
tell you the leading fashion; and what is, in our shops, for the moment,
the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles.

Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot have good
architecture merely by