except under the figure of Britannia or the British Lion; and how the
existence of the popular jest-book, which might have seemed secure in
its necessity to our weekly recreation, is yet virtually centred on
the imaginary animation of a puppet, and the imaginary elevation to
reason of a dog. But in the Middle Ages, this action of the Fancy,
now distorted and despised, was the happy and sacred tutress of every
faculty of the body and soul; and the works and thoughts of art, the
joys and toils of men, rose and flowed on in the bright air of it,
with the aspiration of a flame, and the beneficence of a fountain.

And now, in the rest of my lecture, I had intended to give you a broad
summary of the rise and fall of English art, born under this code of
theology, and this enthusiasm of duty;--of its rise, from the rude
vaults of Westminster, to the finished majesty of Wells;--and of its
fall, from that brief hour of the thirteenth century, through the wars
of the Bolingbroke, and the pride of the Tudor, and the lust of the
Stewart, to expire under the mocking snarl and ruthless blow of the
Puritan. But you know that I have always, in my most serious work,
allowed myself to be influenced by those Chances, as they are now
called,--but to my own feeling and belief, guidances, and even, if
rightly understood, commands,--which, as far as I have read history,
the best and sincerest men think providential. Had this lecture been
on common principles of art, I should have finished it as I intended,
without fear of its being the worse for my consistency. But it deals,
on the contrary, with a subject, respecting which every sentence I
write, or speak, is of importance in its issue; and I allowed, as you
heard, the momentary observation of a friend, to give an entirely new
cast to the close of my last lecture. Much more, I feel it incumbent
upon me in this one, to take advantage of the most opportune help,
though in an unexpected direction, given me by my constant tutor,