least considering what the genius or instinct of the spectator might
otherwise demand, or approve. But in the now attempted sketch of
Christian history, I have approached every question from the people's
side, and examined the nature, not of the special faculties by which
the work was produced, but of the general instinct by which it was
asked for, and enjoyed. Therefore I thought the proper heading for
these papers should represent them as descriptive of the _Pleasures_
of England, rather than of its _Arts_.

And of these pleasures, necessarily, the leading one was that of
Learning, in the sense of receiving instruction;--a pleasure totally
separate from that of finding out things for yourself,--and an
extremely sweet and sacred pleasure, when you know how to seek it, and
receive.

On which I am the more disposed, and even compelled, here to insist,
because your modern ideas of Development imply that you must all
turn out what you are to be, and find out what you are to know, for
yourselves, by the inevitable operation of your anterior affinities
and inner consciences:--whereas the old idea of education was that the
baby material of you, however accidentally or inevitably born, was
at least to be by external force, and ancestral knowledge, bred; and
treated by its Fathers and Tutors as a plastic vase, to be shaped or
mannered as _they_ chose, not as _it_ chose, and filled, when its form
was well finished and baked, with sweetness of sound doctrine, as with
Hybla honey, or Arabian spikenard.

Without debating how far these two modes of acquiring
knowledge--finding out, and being told--may severally be good, and
in perfect instruction combined, I have to point out to you that,