 "There is something," he thus writes,

"in the modern study of the fine arts, belles-lettres, and mere antiquities, that gives the mind a littleness which totally unfits it for being suitably affected with things truly great in characters eminent for love of religion, liberty, and true learning.To demolish a Gothic arch, break a pane of painted glass, or deface a picture, are with them acts of ferocious sacrilege, not to be atoned for, the perpetrators of which must be ipso facto excommunicated from all civil society, and reckoned henceforth among savages; while to preserve these magnificent trifles, for which they entertain a veneration little less idolatrous than their Popish or Pagan predecessors, they would consign whole nations to ignorance or perdition.