Gentleness and humanity are the characteristic virtues of the later age. It is a mistake to suppose, as some have done, that such pieces as _Le Crapaud_, _Après la Bataille_, and _Les Pauvres Gens_ have no connexion with any epoch. In Hugo's view, that tenderness for the weak and the defenceless which is their keynote was the peculiar mark of the age in which he lived, and a foretaste of the glory that was to come. For the great purpose which his reading of human history reveals to him is the increase of the love of man to man, the widening of the bounds of liberty, the growth of brotherly feeling. Suffering and oppression behind, freedom and joy in front, so does Hugo's imagination picture world-history, and his love of violent antitheses made him paint the past in the darkest colours in order that his vision of the future might shine with the greater radiance. Troubled as he was, no doubt, by the sombre events of 1850-1, and by the slow progress that the principles of peace seemed to be making in the world, yet the inspiration of that vision was never lost, and in the apocalyptic vision of the poem _Plein Ciel_ he gave superb lyrical expression to the thought that man will find his heaven, not above the clouds, but in a regenerated earth, penetrated with the spirit of light and love. This underlying conception was expressed again in the poem entitled _La Vision d'où est sorti ce livre_, which was written at Guernsey in 1857, but published only in 1877. In this vision the history of man appears to the poet in the form of a gigantic wall, on which are seen the crimes and sufferings of all the ages. Two spirits pass by, the spirit of Fate (_Fatalité_), which is the enemy of man, and the spirit of God (Dieu), which is the friend of man. This wall is shivered into fragments, by which the seer understands the destruction of pain and evil, and the closing of the long volume of human history. That volume, the end of which the dreamer foresees, the poet proposes to write: Ce livre, c'est le reste effrayant de Babel; C'est la lugubre Tour des Choses, l'édifice Du bien, du mal, des pleurs, des deuils, des sacrifices, Fier jadis, dominant les lointains horizons, Aujourd'hui n'ayant plus que de hideux tronçons Épars, couchés, perdus dans l'obscure vallée; C'est l'épopée humaine, âpre, immense--écroulée.