Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/79

 of a great battle? We have just accomplished a wide, far-reaching extension of Local Government. We desire a steady growth of the Municipal spirit, and its embodiment in Municipal buildings, in town and village halls, institutes and libraries. Have we in Wales the Architects and the popular taste and training which will model these on something better than a jail or a workhouse or a barn, and make them buildings well adapted to their purpose, and so thoughtfully designed as to be a joy and a blessing to see and even to pass near in our daily ways and walks? Year by year, men and women in increasing numbers seek rest, pleasure, recreation and natural beauty in the glens and along the sea—coast of Wales: but do our growing towns show traces of a characteristic and worthy domestic Architecture? By the raising of the standard of comfort, by the quickening sense of sanitary needs, and by causes affecting the rural population into which I cannot now enter, there has been, and is, very considerable building of farmsteads and of cottages. To those who have seen