From which class of society did the literary movement emanate? If it could by any possibility have emanated from the peasantry, there might have been something simple-hearted and touching about it; if from the ranks of the hardly tried, suffering priesthood, it would perhaps have attracted attention by its fervour; if it had been the production of the party who, following the example of their ruler, attached themselves to the church from worldly motives, it would have been marked by the absence of any inspiring idea. But none of these supposed cases is the actual one. These three groups formed the public for the new literature, were its sounding-board and echo; not one of them was intellectually fertile. The new Catholic school of literature was destitute of the qualities of simplicity and fervour. But it was not without an inspiring idea. With conviction and determination it vindicates the idea which the Revolution had utterly repudiated and discredited, namely, the principle of authority. Its tendency is rather political than religious. Its leaders do not desire so much to rescue souls as to rescue tradition; they crave for religion as a panacea for lawlessness; the persistency of their appeal to authority is due to their bankruptcy in everything except outward authority. The movement begins at widely separated, disconnected points; none of its originators are at first acquainted with each other. During the Revolution Chateaubriand, for instance, is wandering about in America, De Maistre in Switzerland; Bonald plans his first work at Heidelberg. As soon as the intellectual reaction begins, most of the emigrants return home, and the principle of authority is championed in literature both by foreign, independent writers like De Maistre, and by men like Chateaubriand and Bonald, whom Bonaparte's assumption of power recalls to France. These latter attach themselves for the time being to Bonaparte, in his capacity of restorer of the church; but soon, either during his reign or after his fall, they espouse, with far greater warmth, far more strength of conviction, the cause of the Bourbons, to which their own fundamental principle draws them with all the force of consistency. Napoleon's plan of gaining the support of the church and depriving the Bourbons of the sympathy of the clergy by means of the Concordat failed, as it was naturally predestined to do. Soon there was open war between him and the Pope; and soon the literary movement, the origin of which is contemporaneous with the Concordat, declares itself openly on the side of royalty with its supposed rightful claims.