sees the eagles on the pedestal whetting their beaks, and feels that the immortal shades are awakening. Who dare think of wiping out this history of France written in blood with the points of swords! Who dare dispute the right of the old generals to the inheritance of Napoleon's glory! Who dare strike at the trophies of France! Every spark struck from the column is a flash of lightning. With magnificent eloquence and ardent enthusiasm Napoleon's history is evolved into a heroic poem, and any sagacious reader of that poem might have foreseen that in the course of a year Hugo (in his poem "Bounaberdi," in _Les Orientales_, the motto of which is: "Grand comme le monde") would go over to the veritable cult of Napoleon. And since Bonapartism and Liberalism, in those days shaded off into each other--_vide_ Béranger, Armand Carrel, and Heinrich Heine--it would also have been easy to foresee the possibility of his defining Romanticism a few years later (in the preface to _Hernani_) as "liberalism in literature." [1] See the notes to Lamartine's _Chant du sacre_. [2] Alfred de Musset, _Confessions d'un enfant du siècle_. [3] See Saisset, _La philosophic et la renaissance religieuse. Revue des deux mondes_, 1853, tome i. [4] _Manuel de piété à l'usage des seminaries_, 7 éd. Paris, 1835. [5] _Journal d'un poète_, 47. [6] See Vinet's interesting essays on modern French lyric poetry. XIV CONCLUSION But what did more than anything else to forward the dissolution of the school of authority was the great and crowning piece of folly, as regards literature, committed by the Bourbons in 1824. Chateaubriand was dismissed in the most contemptuous manner from the Villèle ministry, and that at the moment when he had just added to the reputation of the name of Bourbon by the successful Spanish war, which he himself called his political _René_, that is to say, his political masterpiece. Chateaubriand, the man to whom in a manner everything was due, the man who had laid the foundation stone of the whole building that had been erected, was contemptuously set aside.[1] And the ingratitude of his colleagues was as glaring as that of the court, for it was he who had made ministers of Villèle and Corbière.[2] His popularity amongst the royalists was at this time at its height, and with reason; for the war in Spain, which he had succeeded in carrying through in spite of all manner of opposition in Europe and the disinclination of France itself, was well calculated to do service to the cause of the monarchy by the grace of God, then in considerable disrepute.