Following the example of some industrious collectors of Polish songs and proverbs, a brisk investigation was instituted into the literary treasures of other countries. We had at that time but one representative of the new æsthetical and philosophical ideas and poetic tendencies—Casimir Brodzinski. As professor of Polish Literature at the Warsaw University, and member of the Scientific Society, he could not directly oppose the fundamental principles of his colleagues, who belonged to the classical school; but these circumstances facilitated rather than retarded the spread of his opinions, which he propagated by his lectures at the University and by essays in the journals. These opinions were based on the principles of Kant and Schiller, on the historical study of Polish literature, and on the poetical theories of the Romantic School. [Sidenote: RISE OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.] Casimir Brodzinski gathered around him a band of talented young men, and a contest began, which daily became more violent and bitter, between the Classists and Romanticists. On one side were the advocates of the old classic principles; on the other youth, with its ready enthusiasm for everything new, with such men as Bohdan Zaleski, Sewerin Goszczynski, Anton Malczewski, Stephan Witwicki, Moritz Goslowski, and later on Slowacki and Sigismund Krasinski. Mickiewicz,[63] the gifted author of “Grazyna” and “Dziady;” and the greatest of Polish poets, supported by the historians Lelewel and Brodzinski, placed himself at the head of the Romantic School, and his genius soon triumphed over its opponents. At the time when the battle between the champions of the two schools was raging hottest, Chopin felt the first stirrings of creative genius. Living in the midst of a youthful circle, enthusiastic for national poetry, which it not unjustly regarded as the basis of all poetry, he made research for national melodies, and sought by careful artistic treatment to enhance their value and give them an assured place in musical literature. In this he succeeded more completely than any other composer. No one could reproduce with such beauty and truth the peculiar melancholy feeling pervading all Sarmatian melodies. [Sidenote: NATIONAL AND SOCIAL INFLUENCES.] The noblest enthusiasm glows in Chopinʼs music: it may be called the complement, or rather the illustration of the new national poetry. An eminent Polish historian says of it: “A peculiar importance belongs to Chopinʼs music, because in it more than in any other our nation is represented in the noblest light, in the possession of an independence, hitherto unknown. Such music springs from the same source as our national poetry.”