Europe, and prior to the rise of this "School" in Germany. In music, Rousseau recognized the contrast, and showed that rhythm and melody were the prevailing principle of the ancient, as harmony is of the modern music. But he is contracted enough to reject the latter; in which we cannot at all agree with him. With respect to the arts of design, Hemsterhuys makes a clever apophthegm: "The ancient painters seem to have been too much sculptors, the modern sculptors are too much painters." This goes to the very heart of the matter; for, as I shall more expressly prove in the sequel, the spirit of all ancient art and poetry is plastic, as that of the modern is picturesque.

I will endeavour, by means of an example borrowed from another art, that of architecture, to illustrate what I mean by this harmonious recognition of seeming opposites. In the middle ages there prevailed, and in the latter centuries of that æra developed itself to the most perfect maturity, a style of architecture which has been denominated Gothic, but ought to have been called OldGerman. When, upon the revival of classic antiquity in general, imitation of the Grecian architecture came up, which often indeed was but too injudiciously applied, without regard had to difference of climate and to the destination of the edifices, the zealots for this new taste condemned the Gothic style altogether, reviled it as tasteless, gloomy, barbarous. In the Italians, if anywhere, this was excusable: considering their many hereditary remains of ancient structures, and also their climatical affinity with the Greeks and Romans, partiality for ancient architecture lay, as it were, in their very blood. But we northern people are not to be so easily talked out of those powerful, solemn impressions which fall upon us at the very entering into a Gothic cathedral. Rather we will endeavour to account for these impressions and to justify them. A very little attention will satisfy us that the Gothic architecture bespeaks not only extraordinary mechanical skill, but a marvellous outlay of inventive genius; upon still closer contemplation we shall recognize its profound significance, and perceive that it forms a complete finished system in itself quite as much as does that of the Greeks.

To apply this to the matter in hand. The Pantheon is not more different from Westminster Abbey or St. Stephen's in Vienna, than is the structure of a tragedy of Sophocles from that of a play of Shakspeare. The comparison between these miracles

of poetry and architecture might be carried out still further. But really does admiration of the one necessitate us to have a mean esteem of the other? Cannot we admit that each in its own kind is great and admirable, though this is, and is meant to be, quite another thing from that? It were worth making the attempt. We do not wish to argue any man out of his preference for the one or the other. The world is wide, and has room enough in it for many things that differ, without their interfering with one another. But a preference originating in views directed to one side alone of the question, a preference conceived one knows not why nor wherefore, is not what makes a connoisseur. No: the true connoisseur is he who can suspend his mind, free and unconstrained, in liberal contemplation of discrepant principles and tendencies, renouncing the while his own individual partialities.

It might suffice for our present purpose, to have thus barely indicated the existence of this striking contrast between the antique or classical and the romantic. But as exclusive admirers of the ancients still persist in maintaining that every deviation from these models is a mere whim of the "new school" of critics, who speak in a mysterious way about it, but cannot manage to make it dependent upon any valid idea, I will endeavour to give an explanation of the origin and spirit of the romantic, and then let it be determined whether the use of the term and recognition of the thing be thereby justified.

The mental culture of the Greeks was a finished education in the school of nature. Of a beautiful and noble race, gifted with impressible senses and a cheerful spirit, under a mild sky, they lived and bloomed in perfect health of being, and, favoured by a rare combination of circumstances, achieved all that could be achieved by the limitary creature man. Their whole system of art and poetry is the manifestation of this harmony of all powers. They invented the poetry of joy.

Their religion consisted in deification of nature in its various powers, and of the earthly life: but this worship, which fancy, among other nations, darkened with hideous shapes hardening the heart to cruelty, assumed among this people a form of grandeur, dignity, and mildness. Here superstition, elsewhere the tyrant of human endowments, seemed glad to lend a hand

to their most free development; it cherished the art by which it was adorned, and out of idols grew ideals.

But greatly as the Greeks succeeded in the Beautiful and even the Moral, we can concede to their culture no higher character than that of a refined and dignified sensuality. Of course this must be understood in the general and in the gross. Occasional dim forebodings of philosophers, lightning-gleams of poetic inspiration, these form the exception. Man can never altogether turn his back upon the Infinite; some evanid recollections will testify of the home he has lost; but the point to be considered is, what is the predominant tendency of his endeavours?

Religion is the root of man's being. Were it possible for him to renounce all religion, even that which is unconscious and independent of the will, he would become all surface, no heart nor soul. Shift this centre in any degree, in the same degree will the system of the mind and affections be modified in its entire line of effect.

And this was brought about in Europe by the introduction of Christianity. This sublime and beneficent religion regenerated the decrepid worn-out old world, became the leading principle in the history of the modern nations, and at this day, when many conceit themselves to have out-grown its guidance, they are more influenced by it, in their views of all human affairs, than they are themselves aware.

Next to Christianity, the mental culture of Europe, since the commencement of the middle ages, was decidedly influenced by the German race of northern invaders, who infused new quickening into a degenerated age. The inclemency of northern nature drives the man more inward upon himself, and what is lost in sportive development of the sensitive being is amply compensated, wherever there are noble endowments, in earnestness of spirit. Hence the frank heartiness with which the old German tribes welcomed Christianity; so that among no other race of men has it penetrated so deeply into the inner man, approved itself so energetic in its effects, and so interwoven itself with all human sensibilities.

The rugged but honest heroism of the northern conquerors, by admixture of Christian sentiments, gave rise to chivalry, the object of which was to guard the practice of arms, by vows which

were looked upon as sacred, from that rude and base abuse of force into which it is so apt to decline.

One ingredient in the chivalrous virtue was a new and more delicate spirit of love, considered as an enthusiastic homage to genuine female excellence, which was now for the first time revered as the acme of human nature, and, exalted as it was by religion under the form of virgin maternity, touched all hearts with an undefinable intimation of the mystery of pure love.

As Christianity did not, like the heathen worship, content itself with certain exterior performances, but laid claim to the whole inner man with all its remotest thoughts and imaginations, the feeling of moral independence took refuge in the domain of honour; a kind of secular morality which subsisted along with that of religion, and often came in collision therewith, but yet akin to it in so far as it never calculated consequences, but attached absolute sanctity to principles of action elevated as articles of faith above all inquisition of a misplaced ratiocination.

Chivalry, love, and honour are, together with religion itself, the subjects of that natural poetry which poured itself forth with incredible copiousness in the middle ages, and preceded a more conscious and thoughtful cultivation of the romantic spirit. This æra too had its mythology, consisting in chivalrous fables and religious legends, but its marvellous and its heroism forming a perfect contrast to those of the ancient mythology.

Some writers, in other respects agreeing with us in our conception and derivation of the peculiar character of the moderns, have placed the essence of the northern poetry in melancholy, and, rightly understood, we have no objection to this view of

the matter.

Among the Greeks, human nature was self-satisfied; it had no misgivings of defect, and endeavoured after no other perfection than that which it actually could attain by the exercise of its own energies. A higher wisdom teaches us that human nature, through a grievous aberration, has lost the position originally assigned to it, and that the sole destination of its earthly existence is to struggle back thither, which, however, left to itself, it cannot. The old religion of the senses did but wish to earn outward perishable blessings; immortality, as far as it was believed, stood shadow-like in the obscure distance, a faded dream of this sunny waking life. Under the Christian view, it is just the reverse: the

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contemplation of the infinite has annihilated the finite; life has become the world of shadows, the night of being; the eternal day of essential existence dawns only beyond the grave. Under such a religion, that mysterious foreboding which slumbers in every feeling heart cannot but be wakened into distinct consciousness that we are in quest of a happiness which is unattainable here, that no external object will ever be altogether able to fill the capacity of the soul, that all enjoyment is a fleeting illusion. And when the soul sits down, as it were, beside these waters of Babylon, and breathes forth its longing aspirations towards the home from which it has become estranged, what else can be the key-note of its songs but heaviness of heart? And so it is. The poetry of the ancients was that of possession, ours is that of longing desire: the one stands firm on the soil of the present; the other wavers betwixt reminiscence of the past, and bodeful intimations of the future. Let not this be understood to imply that all must flow away in monotonous lamentation, the melancholy always uttering itself audibly, and drowning all besides. As under that cheerful view of things which the Greeks took, that austere Tragedy of theirs was still a possible phenomenon; so that romantic poetry, which originated in the different views I have been describing, could run along the whole scale of the feelings, even up to the highest note of joy; but still there will always be an indescribable something in which it shall carry the marks of its origin. The feeling of the moderns has, on the whole, become more deep and inward, the fancy more incorporeal, the thoughts more contemplative. To be sure, in nature the boundaries run into one another, and the things are not so sharply defined as one is under the necessity of doing in order to eliminate a theoretical idea.

The Grecian ideal of human nature was, perfect unison and proportion of all powers, natural harmony. The moderns, on the contrary, have arrived at the consciousness of the disunion there is within, which renders such an ideal no longer possible; hence the endeavour of their poetry is to make these two worlds, between which we feel ourselves to be divided, the world of sense and the world of spirit, at one with each other, and to blend them indissolubly together. The impressions of sense shall be hallowed, as it were, by their mysterious league with higher feelings, while the spirit will deposit its bodings or indescribable