w how congenial they were to the spirit of that time. One
need only mention Werner's drama on the subject of Luther's life
(1805), Mendelssohn's "Reformation Symphony" (1832-3), Meyerbeer's
opera "The Huguenots" (1836), and Kaulbach's painting "The Age of the
Reformation" (c. 1810). In fact the Reformation was a Romantic
movement, with its emotional and mystical piety, its endeavor to
transcend the limits of the classic spirit, to search for the infinite,
to scorn the trammels of traditional order and method.

[Sidenote: Mme. de Stael]

All this is reflected in Mme. de Stael's enthusiastic appreciation of
Protestant Germany, in which she found a people characterized by
reflectiveness, idealism, and energy of inner conviction. She
contrasted Luther's revolution of ideas with her own countrymen's
revolution of acts, practical if not materialistic. The German had
brought back religion from an affair of politics to be a matter of
life; had transferred it from the realm of calculated interest to that
of heart and brain.

[Sidenote: Heine]

Much the same ideas, set forth with the most dazzling brilliancy of
style, animate Heine's too much neglected sketch of German religion and
philosophy. To a French public, unappreciative of German literature,
Heine points out that the place taken in France by _belles lettres_ is
taken east of the Rhine by metaphysics. From Luther to Kant there is
one continuous development of thought, and no less than two revolutions
in spiritual values. Luther was the sword and tongue of his time; the
tempest that shattered the old oaks of hoary tyranny; his hymn was the
Marseillaise of the spirit; he made a revolution and not with {716}
rose-leaves, either, but with a certain, "divine brutality." He gave
his people language, Kant gave them thought; Luther deposed the pope;
Robespierre decapitated the king; Kant disposed of God: it was all one
insurrection of Man against the same tyrant under different names.

Under the triple influence of liberalism, romanticism and the
scientific impulse presently to be described, most of the great
historians of the middle nineteenth century wrote. If not the
greatest, yet the most lovable of them all, was Jules Michelet,
[Sidenote: Michelet] a free-thinker of Huguenot ancestry. His _History
of France_ is like the biography of some loved and worshipped genius;
he agonizes in her trials, he glories in her triumphs. And to all
great men, her own and other