her.

THE HISTORIANS.--Even the historians of this first half of the century
were poets: Augustin Thierry, who reconstituted scientifically but
imaginatively _The Merovingian Era_; Michelet, pupil of Vico, who saw in
history the development of an immense poem and cast over his account of
the Middle Ages the fire and feverishness of his ardent imagination and
tremulous sensitiveness. Guizot and Thiers can be left apart, for they
were statesmen by education and, although capable of passion, sought the
one to rationally generalise and "discipline history," as was said, the
other solely to capture facts accurately and to set them out clearly in
orderly fashion.

THE PHILOSOPHERS.--The philosophers were not sheltered from this
contagion, and if Cousin and his eclectic school loved to attach
themselves to the seventeenth century both in mind and style, Lamennais,
first in his _Essay on Indifference_, then in his _Study of a
Philosophy_ and in his _Words of a Believer_, impassioned, impetuous, and
febrile, underwent the influence of romanticism, but also gave to the
romantics the greater portion of the ideas they put in verse.

THE NOVEL.--As for the novel, it was only natural that it should be
deeply affected by the spirit of the new school. George Sand wrote
lyrical novels, if the phrase may be used--and, as I think, it is here
the accurate expression--entitled _Indiana_, _Valentine_, _Mauprat_, and
especially _Lelia_. She was to impart wisdom later on.

It even happened that a mind born to see reality in an admirably accurate
manner, saw it so only by reason of the times, or at least partly due to
the times, associated it with a magnifying but deforming imagination