No,--what I complain of is not the lecturer's opinions, but the eloquence with which he expressed them. He does not like statues better than I do; but is it possible that he fails to see that the one nuisance leads directly to the other, and that we set up three images of Talkers for one to any kind of man who was useful in his generation? Let him beware, or he will himself be petrified after death. Boston seems to be specially unfortunate. She has more statues and more speakers than any other city on this continent. I have with my own eyes seen a book called "The Hundred Boston Orators." This would seem to give her a fairer title to be called the _tire_ than the _hub_ of creation. What with the speeches of her great men while they are alive, and those of her surviving great men about those aforesaid after they are dead, and those we look forward to from her _ditto ditto_ yet to be upon her _ditto ditto_ now in being, and those of her paulopost _ditto ditto_ upon her _ditto ditto_ yet to be, and those--But I am getting into the house that Jack built. And yet I remember once visiting the Massachusetts State House and being struck with the Pythagorean fish hung on high in the Representatives' Chamber, the emblem of a silence too sacred, as would seem, to be observed except on Sundays. Eloquent Philip Vandal, I appeal to you as a man and a brother, let us two form (not an Antediluvian, for there are plenty, but) an Antidiluvian Society against the flood of milk-and-water that threatens the land. Let us adopt as our creed these two propositions:-- I. _Tongues were given us to be held._ II. _Dumbness sets the brute below the man: Silence elevates the man above the brute._ Every one of those hundred orators is to me a more fearful thought than that of a hundred men gathering samphire. And when we take into account how large a portion of them (if the present mania hold) are likely to be commemorated in stone or some even more durable material, the conception is positively stunning.