Gautier's worship of art indicates an onward step in the development of Romanticism. In its first stage the literary renaissance was devotion to Catholicism and the old monarchy. When the movement, with Hugo at its head, made its second great advance, it undoubtedly entered upon the stage of enthusiasm for art as art; but in the case of the majority the step was an unconscious one; their enthusiasm for art concealed itself under enthusiasm for the Middle Ages, or for the sixteenth century, or for strength of passion, or for local colouring. Gautier alone was fully conscious of the principle which underlay all these manifestations; hence his name is synonymous with that phase of the Romantic movement during which poetry asserts its rights. If we were to judge by certain of Victor Hugo's prefaces (the preface to _Les Orientales_, for instance), it might seem as if Hugo's poetry, neglecting every other ideal, had no aim but the attainment of perfect liberty for itself; but Hugo was far too much of the agitator by nature to regard this struggle, this endeavour, as more than a preliminary step. It was reserved for the disciple whom the master loved best, to regard this stage as the final one. To Gautier, as to the German Romanticists, the combat of Romanticism with utilitarianism was equivalent to a proclamation of the absolute independence of art. Théophile Gautier was born at Tarbes, in the south of France, on the 30th of August 1811. He came of a family of good standing and pronounced Royalist principles. Like Hugo and Dumas, he was descended from a brave officer. Hugo's father, as major in Napoleon's army in Italy, fought with Fra Diavolo, and as general and governor of a Spanish province under Joseph, with the brave Spanish rebels. Dumas' father was an athlete, who, according to tradition (strictly speaking, according to the younger Dumas), could crush a horse to death between his legs and bite through a helmet, and who held the bridge of Brixen alone against an advanced guard of twenty men. Gautier's grandfather won renown by being the first in the attack on Bergen-op-Zoom. He was a man of colossal strength and gigantic proportions, who lived in the open air, hunted every day, and was never seen without his gun, which he would fire into the air again and again if anything put him into specially good spirits. He lived to be a hundred. Théophile's father, who also lived to a great age, displayed his inherited vigour chiefly in intellectual matters. He was a well-educated man of many and varied acquirements. It speaks well for his literary taste and his freedom from prejudice, that he greatly admired the preface to _Cromwell_, and that he approved of his son's poetic tendencies; indeed, he was so delighted with the latter's audacious novel, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, that, whilst the book was being written, he often locked the young man into his room with the words: "You don't come out until you