d
with toil and surrounded by shadow, tormented by his rulers and misled
by his priests. Paganism was merely material; Rome was strong, cruel,
and repressive; 'a winding-sheet of the nations,' he calls her in
_Changement d'Horizon_[2]; Judaism, his view of which must be sought
rather in _Dieu_ than in the _Legende_, cold and harsh, could influence
man only by keeping him within the strait-waistcoat of a narrow law; the
life of the founder of Christianity was only a momentary gleam of light
in the darkness; the Middle Age was a confused turmoil of rude heroism
and cunning savagery; the Renaissance a relapse into heathenism and
the worship of nature. Yet with the modern ages comes a rift in the
blackness; the poets reveal a new spirit; their songs are the songs of
peace and not of war:

Le poete a la mort dit: Meurs, guerre, ombre, Envie!--
Et chasse doucement les hommes vers la vie;
Et l'on voit de ses vers, goutte a goutte, des pleurs
Tomber sur les enfants, les femmes et les fleurs;
Et des astres jaillir de ses strophes volantes;
Et son chant fait pousser des bourgeons verts aux plantes;
Et ses reves sont faits d'aurore, et dans l'amour,
Sa bouche chante et rit, toute pleine de jour.
(_Changement d'Horizon_.)

[Footnote 2: For a fuller development of this view see _La Fin de Satan:
Le Gibet_, I, i.]

Gentleness and humanity are the characteristic virtues of the later age.
It is a mistake to suppose, as some have done, that such pieces as _Le
Crapaud_, _Apres la Bataille_, and _Les Pauvres Gens_ have no connexion
with any epoch. In Hugo's view, that tenderness for the weak and the
defenceless which is their keynote was the peculiar mark of the age in
which he lived, and a foretaste of the glory that was to come. For the
great purpose which his reading of human history reveals to him is
the increase of the love of man to man, the widening of the bounds of
liberty, the growth of brotherly feeling. Suffering and oppression
behind, freedom and joy in front, so does Hugo's imagination picture
world-history, and his love of violent antitheses made him paint the
past in the darkest colours in order that his vision of the future might
shine with the greater radiance. Troubled as he was, no doubt, by the
sombre events of 1850-1, and by the slow progress that the principles
of peace seemed to be making in the world, yet the inspiration of that
vision was never lost, and in t