astonishing scenes.... I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an
exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent,
nor a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry.' 4. The same
passionate appreciation extends with the Romanticists to all full and rich
beauty and everything grand and heroic. 5. This is naturally connected also
with a love for the remote, the strange, and the unusual, for mystery, the
supernatural, and everything that creates wonder. Especially, there is a
great revival of interest in the Middle Ages, whose life seemed to the men
of the eighteenth century, and indeed to a large extent really was,
picturesque and by comparison varied and adventurous. In the eighteenth
century this particular revival was called 'Gothic,' a name which the
Pseudo-classicists, using it as a synonym for 'barbarous,' had applied to
the Middle Ages and all their works, on the mistaken supposition that all
the barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire and founded the medieval
states were Goths. 6. In contrast to the pseudo-classical preference for
abstractions, there is, among the Romanticists, a devotion to concrete
things, the details of Nature and of life. In expression, of course, this
brings about a return to specific words and phraseology, in the desire to
picture objects clearly and fully. 7. There is an increasing democratic
feeling, a breaking away from the interest in artificial social life and a
conviction that every human being is worthy of respect. Hence sprang the
sentiment of universal brotherhood and the interest in universal freedom,
which finally extended even to the negroes and resulted in the abolition of
slavery. But from the beginning there was a reawakening of interest in the
life of the common people--an impulse which is not inconsistent with the
love of the remote and unusual, but rather means the discovery of a
neglected world of novelty at the very door of the educated and literary
classes. 8. There is a strong tendency to melancholy, which is often
carried to the point of morbidness and often expresses itself in meditation
and moralizing on the tragedies of life and the mystery of death. This