The explanation of the change is, that the analytical and reasoning tendency which distinguishes both the imaginative and reflective works of the classical period, had in the new century slowly made way for interest in the actually existing, in what is perceivable by the senses. And the deeper-lying reason of this new preference was that men now placed nature, original, unconscious, rustic, uncultivated nature, above all the culture of civilisation. Why? Because a historically minded age had succeeded to a rationalising one. A man no longer coveted the title of philosopher, for it was now considered a greater distinction to be original than to be a self-conscious thinker. The poetical literature of the eighteenth, nay, even that of the seventeenth century was despised, because it was purely intellectual; because, bloodless and elegant, it seemed to have been produced by attention to conventions and rules, not to have been born and to have grown. For whereas the eighteenth century had held thinking and acting to be the highest forms of activity, the children of the new age regarded origination, natural genesis, as the highest. It was a German idea, Herder's and Goethe's, by which men's minds were unconsciously occupied, and which produced in them an aversion for rules and academic principles. For how could art as unconscious, natural production be subjected to arbitrary external rules! An intellectual movement had begun which recalled the Renaissance. It was as if the air which men breathed intoxicated them. In the long period during which France had been at an intellectual standstill her great neighbours, Germany and England, had hastened past her, had got a long start in the work of emancipation from old, hampering traditions. She felt this, felt it as a humiliation, and the feeling gave a sharp impulse to the new art enthusiasm. And now the works of foreign authors, both the new and the hitherto unknown older books, made their way into the country and revolutionised the minds of the young; every one read translations of Sir Walter Scott's novels, of Byron's _Corsair_ and _Lara_, and devoured Goethe's _Werther_ and Hoffmann's fantastic tales. All at once the votaries of the different arts felt that they were brothers. Musicians studied the literature both of their own country and of other nations; poets (such as Hugo, Gautier, Mérimée, Borel) drew and painted. Poems were read in painters' and sculptors' studios; Delacroix's and Devéria's pupils hummed Hugo's ballads as they stood at their easels. Certain of the great foreign authors, such as Scott and Byron, influenced poets (Hugo, Lamartine, Musset), musicians (Berlioz, Halévy, Félicien David), and painters (Delacroix, Delaroche, Scheffer). Artists attempt to overstep the limits of their own in order to embrace a kindred art. Berlioz writes Childe Harold and Faust symphonies, Félicien David a Desert symphony; music becomes descriptive. First Delacroix and then Ary Scheffer