us feeling is very strongly
excited and imperfectly regulated, art, literature and science, stand
all alike in contrast with the realities of religion; and as empty
fictions, worldly shows and illusions sink equally into nothing. Few
men rise above this point of view. To perceive the real dignity of the
arts and their intimate connexion with what is highest in human nature,
with religion itself, requires both a vivid sense of beauty and a reach
of speculation very rare and difficult to attain. In England the former
is perhaps more common than the latter; the arts are seldom estimated
at their real worth. Those who pursue amusement as the business of
life, value them as they minister to that end; those whose thoughts are
engrossed by religion, reject them altogether as toys and vanities;
many think it allowable to indulge in them, provided it be coolly and
soberly, as innocent diversions; a more numerous party, which thinks
itself by far the wisest, would reconcile the two extremes, and ennoble
these recreations by making them vehicles for piety and morality.

A similar feeling of hostility and contempt towards the arts, not
indeed so extensively diffused as under the reign of our Puritans, but
still sufficiently marked and striking, accompanied the revival of the
religious spirit in Germany. In some instances it was produced by an
intensity of zeal; in the greater number it proceeded from coldness of
imagination and incapacity for philosophical reflexion. It may perhaps
have been strengthened by a cause peculiar to that country. Every one
at all conversant with the modern German literature has been struck by
the frequent recurrence of that which, till a better term shall be
coined for it, may be called the esthetical view of things. It is that
view which regards them not as true or false, nor as good or bad, but
merely with reference to art as possessing or wanting beauty. This
view, the prevalence of which has been referred by Frederic Schlegel to
the influence of Winkelmann over his countrymen, is on some subjects
peculiar to German writers. It has been frequently applied by them,
with the happiest result, as a corrective to the partiality of the
moral and historical views, which, exclusively pursued, must often lead
into the grossest errours. But perhaps it has itself sometimes been
allowed to predominate, and been carried with an intemperate license
into subjects connected with religion. Even where this was not the c