In thus rapidly reviewing the leading causes which have concurred to retard the progress of early art in this country, the Reformation has been merely alluded to as turning aside attention to other pursuits. The commonly received opinion which makes this event a primary and permanent source of our inferiority, seems to rest on a very imperfect knowledge of facts. When the glorious doctrines of the Reformation obtained footing in England, no advance had yet been effected in the formation of a native school; the national refinement was in no degree prepared for the successful cultivation of painting; nor do any circumstances particularly favorable induce the belief, that had the Catholic continued to be the established faith, the arts would have improved. On the contrary, though the number of pictures would doubtless have multiplied, these, as in France at the same period, and under circumstances incomparably more felicitous, must have been the works of foreign artists; consequently, by introducing an artificial manner before any national character of art had been formed, the exoteric taste would, in all probability, have for ever bound up in conventional trammels, the freshness of original conception, and the vigor of national genius. Such we have seen to be the invariable effects of introducing, instead of rearing, art, among every people where the experiment has been attempted. The Reformation, by restoring to the human mind the uncontrolled exercise of its own faculties, by unlocking the barriers by which the will and the powers of free inquiry had been imprisoned, has stamped upon every British institution, as upon every effort of British talent, the worth and the manliness of independent character. Our Fine Arts, though the last to feel, do at length experience this happy influence.