which was liberal in politics.[29] The Academy denounced the new literary doctrine as a heresy and its followers as a sect, but it made head so rapidly that as early as 1829, a year before “Hernani” was acted, a “Histoire du Romantisme en France” appeared, written by a certain M. de Toreinx.[30] It agrees with other authorities in dating the beginning of the movement from Chateaubriand’s “Le Genie du Christianisme” (1802).  “Chateaubriand,” says Gautier, “may be regarded as the grandfather, or, if you prefer it, the sachem of romanticism in France.  In the ’Genius of Christianity’ he restored the Gothic cathedral, in the ‘Natchez’ he reopened the sublimity of nature, which had been closed, in ‘Rene’ he invented melancholy and modern passion.”

Sprung from an ancient Breton family, Chateaubriand came to America in 1790 with the somewhat singular and very French idea of travelling overland to the northwest passage.  He was diverted from this enterprise, however, fell in with an Indian tribe and wandered about with them in the wilderness.  He did not discover the north-west passage, but, according to Lowell, he invented the forest primeval.  Chateaubriand gave the first full utterance to that romantic note which sounds so loudly in Byron’s verse; the restless dissatisfaction with life as it is, the longing for something undefined and unattainable, the love for solitude and the desert, the “passion incapable of being converted into action”—­in short, the maladie du siecle—­since become familiar in “Childe Harold” and in Senancour’s “Obermann.”  In one of the chapters[31] of “Le Genie du Christianisme” he gives an analysis of this modern melancholy, this Byronic satiety and discontent, which he says was unknown to the ancients.  “The farther nations advance in civilization, the more this unsettled state of the passions predominates, for then our imagination is rich, abundant, and full of wonders; but our existence is poor, insipid, and destitute of charms.  With a full heart we dwell in an empty world.”  “Penetrate into those forests of America coeval with the world; what profound silence pervades these retreats when the winds are husht!  What unknown voices when they begin to rise!  Stand still and everything is mute; take but a step and all nature sighs.  Night approaches, the shades thicken; you hear herds of wild beasts passing in the dark; the ground murmurs under your feet; the pealing thunder rebellows in the deserts; the forest bows, the trees fall, an unknown river rolls before you.  The moon at length bursts forth in the east; as you proceed at the foot of the trees, she seems to move before you on their tops and solemnly to accompany your steps.  The wanderer seats himself on the trunk of an oak to await the return of day; he looks alternately at the nocturnal luminary, the darkness, and the river; he feels restless, agitated, and in expectation of something extraordinary; a pleasure never felt before, an unusual fear, cause his heart