rom crime.

These benefits have already accrued to civilised men, because they have
lately allowed a very few of their number peaceably to imitate Mr. Rarey,
and find out what nature--or rather, to speak at once reverently and
accurately, He who made nature--is thinking of; and obey the "voluntatem
Dei in rebus revelatam." This science has done, while yet in her
infancy. What she will do in her maturity, who dare predict? At least,
in the face of such facts as these, those who bid us fear, or restrain,
or mutilate science, bid us commit an act of folly, as well as of
ingratitude, which can only harm ourselves. For science has as yet done
nothing but good. Will any one tell me what harm it has ever done? When
any one will show me a single result of science, of the knowledge of and
use of physical facts, which has not tended directly to the benefit of
mankind, moral and spiritual, as well as physical and economic--then I
shall be tempted to believe that Solomon was wrong when he said that the
one thing to be sought after on earth, more precious than all treasure,
she who has length of days in her right hand, and in her left hand riches
and honour, whose ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are
peace, who is a tree of life to all who lay hold on her, and makes happy
every one who retains her, is--as you will see if you will yourselves
consult the passage--that very Wisdom--by which God has founded the
earth; and that very Understanding--by which He has established the
heavens.

GROTS AND GROVES

I wish this lecture to be suggestive, rather that didactic; to set you
thinking and inquiring for yourselves, rather than learning at second-
hand from me. Some among my audience, I doubt not, will neither need to
be taught by me, nor to be stirred up to inquiry for themselves. They
are already, probably, antiquarians; already better acquainted with the
subject than I am. They come hither, therefore, as critics; I trust not
as unkindly critics. They will, I hope, remember that I am trying to
excite a general interest in that very architecture in which they
delight, and so to make the public do justice to their labours. They
will therefore, I trust,

"Be to my faults a little blind,
Be to my virtues very kind;"

and if my architectural theories do not seem to them correct in all
details--well-founded I believe them myself to be--remember that it is a
slight matter to me, or to the audience,