Rousseau discovered the beauty of scenery for France; St Pierre portrayed it poetically, not only in _Paul and Virginia_, but in _Chaumiére Indienne_ and _Etudes de la Nature_. The science which these two writers lacked, Buffon possessed in a high degree; but he had not the power to delineate Nature and feeling in combination: he lacked insight into the hidden analogies between the movements of the mind and the phenomena of the outer world. Chateaubriand, on the contrary, had this faculty to its full modern extent. It is true that his ego was constantly to the fore, even in dealing with Nature, but his landscapes were full of sympathetic feeling. He had Rousseau's melancholy and unrest, and cared nothing for those 'oppressive masses,' mountains, except as backgrounds; but he was enthusiastic about the scenery which he saw in America, the virgin forests, and the Mississippi--above all, about the sea. His Réné, that life-like figure, half-passionate, half-_blasé_, measuring everything by himself, and flung hither and thither by the waves of passion, shewed a lover's devotion to the sea and to Nature generally.[15] 'It was not God whom I contemplated on the waves in the magnificence of His works: I saw an unknown woman, and the miracle of his smile, the beauties of the sky, seemed to me disclosed by her breath. I would have bartered eternity for one of her caresses. I pictured her to myself as throbbing behind this veil of the universe which hid her from my eyes. Oh! why was it not in my power to rend the veil and press the idealized woman to my heart, to spend myself on her bosom with the love which is the source of my inspiration, my despair, and my life?' In subjectivity and dreaminess both Chateaubriand and Lamartine were like the German romanticists, but their fundamental note was theism, not pantheism. The storm of the French Revolution, which made radical changes in religion, as in all other things, was followed by a reaction. Christianity acquired new power and inwardness, and Nature was unceasingly praised as the mirror of the divine idea of creation. In his _Génie du Christianisme_, Chateaubriand said: The true God, in entering into His Works, has given his immensity to Nature... there is an instinct in man, which puts him in communication with the scenes of Nature. Lamartine was a sentimental dreamer of dreams, a thinker of lofty thoughts which lost themselves in the inexpressible. His _Meditations_ shew his ardent though sad worship of Nature; his love of evening, moonlight, and starlight. For instance, _L'Isolement_: Ici gronde le fleuve aux vagues écumantes, Il serpente et s'enfonce en un lointain obscur: Là le lac immobile étend ses eaux dormantes Oò l'étoile du soir se lève dans l'azur. An sommet de ces monts couronnés de bois sombres, Le crépuscule encore jette un dernier rayon; Et le char vaporeux de la reine des ombres Monte et blanchit déjà les bords de l'horizon. _Le Soir_: