Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in France

This offensive attitude towards the past is the first symptom of the approaching breach with that past's whole system of ideas, from which Hugo's significance as an author and l...

It was a defence of Christianity of a perfectly new species, from the fact that it appealed to imagination, not to faith; to sentiment, not to reason. It impresses one as being...

But all the theological trappings were, as one might say, only glued on to Lamartine's poetry. Or one might perhaps with more propriety liken them to a carelessly constructed ra...

We observe that Sidonie was not content with writing out a rough draft of her own encomiums, but that she also corrected the fair copy. Such proceedings require no comment. The...

O honte, ô crime! on rosse les Puissances, On jet à bas dix mille intelligences Qui figuraient dans les processions; De leurs gradins les Trônes on renverse, On foule aux pieds...

If the revolutionists had been content with secularising church property, they could not well have been convicted of attacking religion. But they interfered in the church's inte...

His behaviour during these same negotiations with Rome witnesses equally strongly to his political wiliness and his unorthodoxy. Cardinal Consalvi, before setting out on his jou...

The principle of authority consistently applied produces such axioms as: Marriage exists for the sake of society, and the object of society is to preserve itself, or--the same t...

In Paris her influence reaches its culminating point. The Czar calls upon her on the evening of her arrival. Her apartments in the Hôtel Montchenu are so situated that he can co...

From the artistic point of view it is interesting to observe the kind of imagery by means of which Chateaubriand, when he is neither borrowing from the Revelation of St. John no...

And so they became priests. Why and how they did it we can learn from the novels which describe the life of the period, such as Beyle's _Rouge et Noire_. This was undoubtedly th...

Raphael lives in the country, Julie in Paris. When he takes a walk, his steps involuntarily turn towards the north, to diminish the distance which separates him from her. His da...

This is the language of a modern Tannhäuser, looking back with longing to his Venusberg. Chateaubriand has evidently forgotten that he had attributed to himself the emotions and...

To Frenchmen the idea of living a long, peaceful life once more became a familiar one. For years mothers had trembled when they saw their sons approaching the age of manhood, th...

"I myself have no doubt on the subject. Outwardly, he is formed like ourselves; but he is an abnormal being, and it is only a special act of creative power which can add such a...

Mirabeau had said that men's first aim must be "to decatholicise" France. To all appearance this was being done. One Commune after another petitioned to be allowed to change its...

Faithful to his rule of allowing no stain to cling to the shield or sword of the church, he vehemently maintains (contradicting an assertion of Bacon's French translator) that t...

Schleiermacher, emotional and fervent, is of opinion that the only hope for religion lies in surrendering all its outworks and leading it back to its inmost stronghold, the pure...

But we do not need to look so far ahead as 1832 to see how the supporters of the principle of authority came into conflict with their own principle. Whatever men may support, th...

His first book, written in 1796, already shows the character of the reaction to which he gives expression, and which he endows with stubborn consistency. While the Revolution is...

These violent outbursts against Luther and Lutheranism are explained by the fact that the French reactionaries, like the German Romanticists, clearly perceived that the modern i...

Think of young enthusiasts such as these, or the priests described in Lamartine's _Jocelyn_, meeting their flocks on Sunday mornings in underground caves, in cold, damp cellars,...

[5] Sources: Thiers, _Histoire du Consulat_; Lanfrey, _Histoire de Napoléon I_.; Mignet, _Histoire de la Révolution_, ii.; De Pradt, _Histoire des quatre concordats_; Portalis,...

In order to strike as deadly a blow as possible at Rousseau's conception of the state as a contract, this conception was represented as not only foolish, but actually criminal....

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Of the poet Hugo writes that it is his duty to lead the vanguard of the people like a pillar of fire, lead them back to the great principles of _order_, morality, and honour. Th...

Six years later, employing the same parable, he writes: "I feel myself bowed down, O Lord, by the weight of a punishment which causes me constant suffering; but as I neither kno...