deas, one cannot imagine what dizziness, what
_eblouissement_ was produced in us by such and such a picture or poem,
which people nowadays are satisfied to approve by a slight nod of the
head. It was so new, so unexpected, so lively, so glowing!" [5]

The romantic school in France had not only its poets, dramatists, and
critics, but its painters, architects, sculptors, musical composers, and
actors. The romantic artist _par excellence_ was Eugene Delacroix, the
painter of "The Crusaders Entering Jerusalem." "The Greeks and Romans
had been so abused by the decadent school of David that they fell into
complete disrepute at this time. Delacroix's first manner was purely
romantic, that is to say, he borrowed nothing from the recollections or
the forms of the antique. The subjects that he treated were relatively
modern, taken from the history of the Middle Ages, from Dante, Shakspere,
Goethe, Lord Byron, or Walter Scott." He painted "Hamlet," "The Boat of
Dante," "Tasso in Bedlam," "Marino Faliero," "The Death of Sardanapalus,"
"The Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha," "The Massacre of the Bishop of
Liege," and similar subjects. Goethe in his conversations with Eckerman
expressed great admiration of Delacroix's interpretations of scenes in
"Faust" (the brawl in Auerbach's cellar, and the midnight ride of Faust
and Mephistopheles to deliver Margaret from prison). Goethe hoped that
the French artist would go on and reproduce the whole of "Faust," and
especially the sorceress' kitchen and the scenes on the Brocken. Other
painters of the romantic school were Camille Roqueplan, who treated
motives drawn from "The Antiquary" and other novels of Walter Scott;[6]
and Eugene Deveria, whose "Birth of Henry IV.," executed in 1827, when
the artist was only twenty-two years of age, was a masterpiece of
colouring and composition. The house of the Deveria brothers was one of
the rallying points of the Parisian romanticists. And then there was
Louis Boulanger, who painted "Mazeppa" and "The Witches' Sabbath" ("La
Ronde du Sabbat" [7]); and the water-colour painter and engraver,
Celestin Nanteuil, who furnished innumerable designs for vignettes,
frontispieces, and book illustrations to the writers of the romantic
school.

"Of all the arts," says Gautier, "the one that lends itself least to the
expression of the romantic idea is certainly sculpture. It seems to have
received from antiquity its definitive form. . . . What can the