The beginning of the nineteenth century in Germany, as well as in England, was a period of effervescence:--there was a good deal of fire, and naturally there was also a good deal of smoke. Genius was exultant in its aspirations after Freedom, Truth, and Wisdom. The Romantic School, which had grown up under the stimulus of Fichte's resolve to enact thought, and had for a time been closely allied with Schelling, counted amongst its literary chiefs the names of the Schlegels, of Tieck, Novalis, and perhaps Richter. The world, as that generation dreamed, was to be made young again,--first by drinking, where Wordsworth led, from the fresh springs of nature,--afterwards when, as often has happened, doubts arose as to where Nature was really to be found, by an elixir distilled from the withered flowers of medieval Catholicism and chivalry, 'Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time' and even from the old roots of primeval wisdom. The good old times of faith and harmonious beauty were to be brought back again by the joint labours of ideas and poetry.-- 'So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it, This Duke would fain know he was without being it.' To that period of incipient and darkling energy Hegel stands in very much the same position as Luther did to the pre-Reformation mystics, to Meister Eckhart, and the unknown author of the 'German Theology.' It was from this side, from the school of Genius and Romance in philosophy, that Hegel was proximately driven, not into sheer re-action, but into system, development, and science.