His death did far more to advance the cause of liberty in general than his life. Under the restored monarchy by the grace of God society had been reduced to an extreme of believing subjection to authority, of slavish subjection to theology, of dutiful subjection to power--to an extreme of supineness and hypocrisy. That monarchy was rotten to the core, but supported outwardly by superstition and bayonets. In England Bentham, the Radical philosopher, ashamed to see the reaction successful even in that most advanced of countries, had tried to undermine it by appealing to men's _interests_. Byron let loose all the _passions_. His attack was not directed at any one point; he aimed at revolutionising men's minds, at awaking them to the sense of tyranny. The politicians of the Holy Alliance period believed that they had bound the spirit of the Revolution in everlasting chains, that they had broken, once and for all, the link which united the nineteenth century to the eighteenth. "Then this one man tied the knot again, which a million of soldiers had hewn through. American republicanism, German free-thought, French revolutionism, Anglo-Saxon radicalism--everything seemed combined in this one spirit. After the Revolution had been suppressed, the press gagged, and science induced to submit, the son of imagination, the outlawed poet, stepped into the breach," and called all vigorous intellects to arms again against the common enemy.[5] The restored monarchy does not really survive him. The principle of authority has never had a more inveterate opponent. In literature the French reaction begins in the name of _feeling_ with Madame de Staël and the whole group of writers connected with her; in society it begins in the name of _order_ with Robespierre and those revolutionists who were his associates. Madame de Staël and Robespierre have this in common, that they are both pupils of Rousseau. After the reaction against Voltaire comes the reaction against Rousseau. On the festival of the Supreme Being follows the great Te Deum in Notre-Dame; on Madame de Staël follows Bonald. The principle of feeling is ousted, or employed, as in the writings of Chateaubriand, to support authority; the principle of order is merged in the principle of authority, which soon controls every domain of life and literature. This principle is, as it were, personified in the first group of reactionaries, led by Joseph de Maistre and Bonald. It has its epic in _Les Martyrs_, and the idea of order reigns in its poets' descriptions of heaven, of hell, and sometimes even of terrestrial scenery. It has its political monument in the Holy Alliance. The supernatural everywhere supplants the natural. We have not only seraphic epic, but also seraphic lyric poetry, seraphic love, pious pilgrimages, and seraphic predictions and visions.