LECTURE III.
THE PLEASURES OF DEED.
ALFRED TO CŒUR DE LION.
IT was my endeavour, in the preceding lecture, to vindicate the thoughts and arts of our Saxon ancestors from whatever scorn might lie coucned under the terms applied to them by Dean Stanley,—'fantastic,' and 'childish.' To-day my task must be carried forward, first, in asserting the grace in fantasy, and the force in infancy, of the English mind, before the Conquest, against the allegations contained in the final passage of Dean Stanley's description of the first founded Westminster; a passage which accepts and asserts, more distinctly than any other equally brief statement I have met with, the to my mind extremely disputable theory, that the Norman invasion was in every respect a sanitary, moral, and intellectual blessing to England, and that the arrow which slew her Harold was indeed the Arrow of the Lord's deliverance.
