<g>From</g> these revolting details of a fierce and persecuting spirit--a spirit opposed in every sense to that of Christianity--we turn with pleasure to the inspiring influence which monastic times and institutions have been supposed to exercise over the dominions of poetry and the fine arts; and of this Warton has transmitted us a glowing sketch:--The customs, institutions, traditions, and religion of the middle ages were favourable to poetry. Their pageants, processions, spectacles, and ceremonies, were friendly to imagery, to personification, and allegory. Ignorance and superstition, so opposite to the real interests of human society, are the parents of imagination. The very devotion of the Gothic times was romantic. The Catholic worship, besides that its numerous exterior appendages were of a picturesque, and even of a poetical nature, disposed the mind to a state of deception, and encouraged, or rather authorized, every species of credulity. Its visions, legends, and miracles, propagated a general propensity to the marvellous, and strengthened the belief of spectres, demons, witches, and incantations. These illusions were heightened by churches of a wonderful mechanism, and constructed on such principles of inexplicable architecture, as had a tendency to impress the soul with every false sensation of religious fear. The savage pomp, the capricious heroism, of the baronial manners, were replete with incident, adventure, and enterprise; and the untractable genius of the feudal policy held forth those irregularities of conduct, discordancies of interest, and dissimilarities of situation, that framed rich materials for the Minstrel-muse. The tacit compact of fashion, which promotes civility by promoting habits of uniformity--and therefore destroys peculiarities of character and situation--had not yet operated upon life; nor had domestic convenience abolished unwieldy magnificence. Literature, and a better sense of things, not only banished these barbarities, but superseded the mode of composition which was formed upon them. Romantic poetry gave way to the force of reason and inquiry: as its own enchanted palaces and gardens instantaneously vanished, when the Christian champion displayed the shield of truth, and baffled the charms of the necromancer.