“This form of romantic art was developed in the East and in the West, but especially in the West, that land of reflection, of the concentration of the spirit upon itself. In the East was accomplished the first expansion of liberty, the first attempt toward enfranchisement from the finite. It was Mahometanism which first swept from the ancient soil all idolatry, and religions born of the imagination. But it absorbed this internal liberty to such a degree that the entire world for it was effaced; plunged in an intoxication of ecstacy, the oriental tastes in contemplation the delights of love, calmness, and felicity.” (Page 456.) 3. We have seen human personality developing itself upon the theatre of real life, and there displaying noble, generous sentiments, such as honor, love and fidelity. Meanwhile it is in the sphere of real life and of purely human interests that liberty and independence of character appear to us. The ideal here consists only in energy and perseverance of will, and passion as well as _independence of character_. Religion and chivalry disappear with their high conceptions, their noble sentiments, and their thoroughly ideal objects. On the contrary, what characterizes the new wants, is the thirst for the joys of the present life, the ardent pursuit of human interests in what in them is actual, determined, or positive. In like manner, in the figurative arts, man wishes objects to be represented in their palpable and visible reality. The destruction of classic art commenced with the predominance of the agreeable, and it ended with satire. Romantic art ends in the exaggeration of the principle of personality, deprived of a substantial and moral content, and thenceforth abandoned to caprice, to the arbitrary, to fancy and excess of passion. There is left further to the imagination of the poet only to paint forcibly and with depth these characters; to the artist, only to imitate the real; to the spirit, to exhibit its rigor in piquant combinations and contrasts. This tendency is revealed under three principal forms: 1st, _Independence of individual character_, pursuing its proper ends, its particular designs, without moral or religious aim; 2d, the exaggeration of the chivalric principle, and the spirit of _adventure_; 3d, the separation of the elements, the union of which constitutes the very idea of art, through the destruction of art itself,—that is to say, the predilection for common reality, _the imitation of the real_, mechanical ability, caprice, fancy, and _humor_.