The profound difference between the English character and the French accounts, in great measure, for Britain’s slowness to develop a national school of sculpture. The temperament which really feels that pure form can adequately express the emotional experience of mankind is rare at any time. It is far less likely to develop among men who prefer positive, concrete mental images than among those who seek the definite, abstract conceptions which the French mind creates. Moreover, during the century after Shakespeare, Britain was fully occupied in settling her religious and political difficulties, and upon such tasks as the absorption of Ireland and Scotland. During the seventeenth century and the early part of the eighteenth England should be pictured by the aid of Arnold’s magnificent image: “The weary Titan, with deaf Ears, and labour-dimm’d eyes, Regarding neither to right Nor left ... Staggering on to her goal.” The Scottish Revolution of 1745 marked the conclusion of the period of political and social stress. By the middle of the eighteenth century Great Britain had “found itself.” The foundations of a system of party government had been laid. The rule of Walpole, “the first Prime Minister of England,” had indicated the direction in which the future of English politics lay. For the first time the country was able to devote a portion of its spare energy to an art which was admittedly not quite attuned to the national temperament. The establishment of the British Museum was an early indication of the new mood. The Royal Academy, founded in 1768, with Reynolds as its first president, indicated the public recognition that a national school of sculpture was possible. Finally, society—with a capital S—condescended to interest itself in classical art. The influence of this upon English sculpture can be happily illustrated from the history of the “Society of Dilettanti.” At the time of the foundation of the Society of Dilettanti, between 1733 and 1735, young British noblemen were wont to make the “Grand Tour” through France and Italy, much as the Roman aristocrats had visited Greece and Asia Minor, during the later days of the Republic and the Empire. Usually the Englishman was accompanied by a tutor, who enabled his young charge to acquire the rudiments of a classical art education. The youth came back to London equipped as an arbiter in all matters of taste. The Society of Dilettanti only admitted such men as these, and its avowed object was to cultivate a taste for works of art which had attracted them during their tours. At first the Society of Dilettanti was little more than a dining club. Horace Walpole, writing in 1743, sneered: “The nominal qualification is having been in Italy; the real one being drunk.”