They were all scions of the Romantic movement. The yearning which filled their spirits and drove them into distant lands was only another symptom of their dissatisfaction with the present. Classicism had dealt with Greek and Roman history by the aid of antique statues, and next used the colours of the Flemish masters to paint Italian peasantry. Romanticism had touched the motley life of the Middle Ages and the richly coloured East; but both had anxiously held aloof from the surroundings of home and the political and social relations of contemporaries. It was obvious that art's next task was to bring down to earth again the ideal that had hovered so long over the domain of ancient history, and then winged its flight to the realms of the East. "_Ah la vie, la vie! le monde est là; il rit, crie, souffre, s'amuse, et on ne le rend pas._" In these words the necessity of the step has been indicated by Fromentin himself. The successful delivery of modern art was first accomplished, the problem stated in 1789 was first solved, when the subversive upheaval of the Third Estate, which had been consummating itself more and more imperiously ever since the Revolution, found distinct expression in the art of painting. Art always moves on parallel lines with religious conceptions, with politics, and with manners. In the Middle Ages men lived in the world beyond the grave, and so the subjects of painting were Madonnas and saints. According to Louis XIV, everything was derived from the King, as light from the sun, and so royalty by the grace of God was reflected in the art of his epoch. The royal sun suffered total eclipse in the Revolution, and with this mighty change of civilisation art had to undergo a new transformation. The 1789 of painting had to follow on the politics of 1789: the proclamation of the liberty and equality of all individuals. Only painting which recognised man in his full freedom, no privileged class of gods and heroes, Italians and Easterns, could be the true child of the Revolution, the art of the new age. Belgium and Germany made the first diffident steps in this direction. CHAPTER XX THE PAINTING OF HUMOROUS ANECDOTE At the very time when the East attracted the French Romanticists, the German and Belgian painters discovered the rustic. Romanticism, driven into strange and tropical regions by its disgust of a sluggish, colourless and inglorious age, now planted a firm foot upon native soil. Amid rustics there was to be found a conservative type of life which perpetuated old usages and picturesque costume.