'Art' to keep in what he considers its place, and if it refuses, take
the law of it, and put it into the Ecclesiastical Court. So he says,
and what is more, he means what he says; and as all the world, from
Hindostan to Canada, knows by most practical proof, what he means, he
sooner or later does, perhaps not always in the wisest way, but still
he does it.

Thus, in fact, the temper of the British nation toward 'Art' is
simply that of the old Puritans, softened, no doubt, and widened, but
only enough so as to permit Art, not to encourage it.

Some men's thoughts on this curious fact would probably take the form
of some aesthetic a priori disquisition, beginning with 'the tendency
of the infinite to reveal itself in the finite,' and ending--who can
tell where? But as we cannot honestly arrogate to ourselves any
skill in the scientia scientiarum, or say, 'The Lord possessed me in
the beginning of His way, before His works of old. When He prepared
the heavens, I was there, when He set a compass upon the face of the
deep;' we shall leave aesthetic science to those who think that they
comprehend it; we shall, as simple disciples of Bacon, deal with
facts and with history as 'the will of God revealed in facts.' We
will leave those who choose to settle what ought to be, and ourselves
look patiently at that which actually was once, and which may be
again; that so out of the conduct of our old Puritan forefathers
(right or wrong), and their long war against 'Art,' we may learn a
wholesome lesson; as we doubtless shall, if we believe firmly that
our history is neither more nor less than what the old Hebrew
prophets called 'God's gracious dealings with his people,' and not
say in our hearts, like some sentimental girl who sings Jacobite
ballads (written forty years ago by men who cared no more for the