This is where the development of French art diverges from that of German. After it had stood under the influence of Poussin, the German long continued to have a suspicious preference for scenery that was devoid of soul, for beautiful views, as the phrase is, and it penetrated much later into the spirit of familiar nature. But as early as the twenties this spirit had revealed itself to the French. It was only in the province of poetry that they went through the period of enthusiasm for exotic nature--and even there not to the same extent as Germany. Only in Chateaubriand's _Atala_ are there to be found pompously pictorial descriptions of strange landscapes which have been in no degree inwardly felt. Chiefly it was the virgin forests of North America that afforded material for splendid pictures, which he describes in grandiloquent and soaring prose. A nature which is impressive and splendid serves as the scenery of these dramas of human life. But with Lamartine the reaction was accomplished. He is the first amongst the poets of France who conceived landscape with an inward emotion, and brought it into harmony with his moods of soul. His poetry was made fervent and glorified by love for his home, for his own province, for South Burgundy. Even in the region of art a poet was the first initiator. [Illustration: _Baschet._ MICHEL. A WINDMILL.] [Illustration: _Baschet._ DE LA BERGE. LANDSCAPE.] _Victor Hugo_, the father of Romanticism in literature, cannot be passed over in the history of landscape painting. Since 1891, when that remarkable exhibition of painter-poets was opened in Paris--an exhibition in which Théophile Gautier, Prosper Merimée, the two de Goncourts, and others were represented by more or less important works--the world learnt what a gifted draughtsman, what a powerful dramatist in landscape, was this great Romanticist. Even in the reminiscences of nature--spirited and suggestive of colour as they are--which he drew with a rapid hand in the margin of his manuscripts, the fiery glow of Romanticism breaks out. The things of which he speaks in the text appear in black shadows and ghostly light. Old castles stand surrounded by clouds of smoke or the blinding glare of fire, moonrise makes phantom silhouettes of the trees, waves lashed by the storm dash together as they spout over vessels; and there are gloomy seas and dark unearthly shores, fairy palaces, proud citadels, and cathedrals of fabled story. Whenever one of his finished drawings is bequeathed to the Louvre, Hugo is certain to receive a place in the history of art as one of the champions of Romanticism.