The Mediaeval
worshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples also--but to our
Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sort,
and built you Versailles and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell
me what _we_ worship, and what _we_ build?
You know we are speaking always of the real, active, continual,
national worship; that by which men act, while they live; not that
which they talk of, when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal
religion, to which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of time; but
we have also a practical and earnest religion, to which we devote
nine-tenths of our property and sixth-sevenths of our time. And we
dispute a great deal about the nominal religion: but we are all
unanimous about this practical one; of which I think you will admit
that the ruling goddess may be best generally described as the
"Goddess 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.
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