What gives these highest literary monuments their proud position is partly the profundity of the thoughts which support them, partly the exact conformity of the perfect artistic expression to the idea; but, unless the author is really a creative thinker, what is of conclusive importance is that his mind should, consciously or unconsciously, be permeated by the most advanced ideas of his age; for it is the spirit which "maketh alive" and preserves from destruction. Romanticism in France displays three main tendencies: 1. The endeavour to reproduce faithfully either some real piece of past history or some phase of modern life--the tendency towards the true. 2. The endeavour after perfection of form, whether apprehended as plasticity and picturesqueness of expression, as severe metrical harmony, or as a prose style imperishable from its concise simplicity--the tendency towards the beautiful. 3. Enthusiasm for great religious or social reformatory ideas, an ethic aim in art--the tendency towards the good. These three main tendencies define the nature of this vigorous and talented school as the three dimensions define space; and each of them produced works of great and enduring value. The last two, as resultant from French influences, occupy our attention first. Although there were to be found in the Romantic School authors who, like Mérimée and Gautier, retained to the last a natural or artificial indifference to the social and political aims of the age, it numbered far more who were strongly appealed to and affected by the endeavours made to organise the future of their country and of the whole human race. Poetry, literature, has two main developments. It is either of the nature of representation based upon psychological observation--in which form it approaches science--or it bears the character of an annunciation, an inspired appeal--in which form it approaches religion. Many writers of the generation of 1830 show that they apprehended it in the latter manner. The critics who have tried to depreciate these men by calling their productions works with a purpose, or problem literature, have done them wrong. For what such critics condemn is nought else but the spirit of the age--its ideas; and these ideas are the life-blood of all true literature. All that we have a right to demand in the interest of art is, that the veins through which this life-blood flows shall only show blue under the skin, not rise black and swollen as they do in the case of a sick or angry man.