le saints on a
background of gold. He entered so deeply into the sentiment of the old
Gothic imagery that he could make a Lady of the Pillar in a brocade
dalmatica, a Mater Dolorosa with the seven swords in her breast, a St.
Christopher with the child Jesus on his shoulder and leaning on a palm
tree, worthy to serve as types to the Byzantine painters of Epinal. . . .
Nothing resembled less the clock face and troubadour Middle Age which
flourished about 1825. It is one of the main services of the romantic
school to have thoroughly disembarrassed art from this." Gautier
describes also a manuscript piece of Nerval, for which he furnished a
prologue, and which was an imitation of one of the _Diableries_, or
popular farces of the Middle Ages, in which the devil was introduced. It
contained a piece within the piece, in the fashion of an old mystery
play, with scenery consisting of the mouth of hell, painted red and
surmounted by a blue paradise starred with gold. An angel came down to
play at dice with the devil for souls. In his excess of zeal, the angel
cheated and the devil grew angry and called him a "big booby, a celestial
fowl," and threatened to pull his feathers out ("Le Prince des Sots").

In France, as in England and Germany, the romantic revival promoted and
accompanied works of erudition like Raynouard's researches in Provencal
and old French philology and the poetry of the troubadours (1816); Creuze
de Lesser's "Chevaliers de la Table Ronde"; Marchangy's "La Gaule
Poetique." History took new impulse from that _sens du passe_ which
romanticism did so much to awaken. Augustin Thierry's obligations to
Scott have already been noticed. It was the war chant of the Prankish
warriors in Chateaubriand's "Les Martyrs"--

"Pharamond! Pharamond! nous avons combattu avec l'epee"--

which first excited his historical imagination and started him upon the
studies which issued in the "Recits Merovingiens" and the "Conquete
d'Angleterre." Barante's "Ducs de Bourgogne" (1814-28) confessedly owes
much of its inception to Scott. Michaud's "History of the Crusades"
(1811-22) and the "History of France" (1833-67) by that most romantic of
historians, Michelet, may also be credited to the romantic movement. The
end of the movement, as a definite period in the history of French
literature, is commonly dated from the failure upon the stage of Victor
Hugo's "Les Burgraves" in 1843. The immediate influence of the French
roma