other snare if this had been away. Why should we fancy
that Protestantism, like the Romanism which it opposes, is a plant
that will not bear the light, and can only be protected at the
expense of the knowledge of facts? Why will we forgot the great
spiritual law which Mrs. Jameson and others in these days are fully
recognising, that "we cannot safely combat the errors of any man or
system without first giving them full credit for whatever excellences
they may retain"? Such a course is the true fruit of that free
spirit of Protestantism which ought to delight in recognising good to
whatever party it may belong; which asserts that every good gift and
perfect gift comes directly from above, and not through the channel
of particular formularies or priesthoods; which, because it loves
faith and virtue, for their own sakes, and not as mere parts of a
"Catholic system," can recognise them and delight in them wherever it
finds them.

Upon these creations of ancient art (as Mrs. Jameson says) we cannot
look as those did for whom they were created; we cannot annihilate
the centuries which lie between us and them; we cannot in simplicity
of heart, forget the artist in the image he has placed before us, nor
supply what may be deficient in his work through a reverentially
excited fancy. We are critical, not credulous. We no longer accept
this polytheistic form of Christianity; and there is little danger, I
suppose, of our falling again into the strange excesses of
superstition to which it led. But if I have not much sympathy with
modern imitations of medieval art, still less can I sympathise with
that narrow puritanical jealousy which holds the monuments of a real
and earnest faith in contempt: all that God has permitted to exist
once in the past should be considered as the possession of the
present; sacred for example or warning, and held as the foundation on
which to build up what is better and purer.--Introd. p. xx.

Mrs. Jameson here speaks in the name of a large and rapidly-
increasing class. The craving for religious art, of which we spoke
above, is spreading far and wide; even in dissenting chapels we see
occasional attempts at architectural splendour, which would have been
considered twenty years ago heretical or idolatrous. And yet with
all this there is, as Mrs. Jameson says, a curious ignorance with
regard to the subject of medieval art, even though it has now become
a reigning fashion among us.

We ha