Works like Ponsard's
_Lucrece_ and Augier's _Gabrielle_ show the reaction from
Romanticism. In the tragedy it is Lucrece, in the modern play,
Gabrielle, upon whom the action hinges. In Ponsard and Augier common
sense, strict justice, and a conventional feeling of honour, are
acclaimed. Marriage is glorified in all of Ponsard, Augier and Octave
Feuillet's dramas. Literature has no doubt been influenced in some
degree by the ruling orders of the monarchy of July. Louis Philippe was
the bourgeois King. An author like Scribe, who dominates the stages of
Europe, is animated by the all-powerful bourgeois spirit, educated and
circumscribed as it was. Cousin, in his first manner, revolutionary
Schellingism, corresponded to romanticism; his eclecticism as a
moralising philosopher corresponds to the School of Common Sense. The
distinctive feature which they have in common becomes a so-called
Idealism. Ponsard revives the classical traditions of the seventeenth
century. In criticism this endeavour in the direction of the sensible
and the classical, is represented by Nisard, Planche, and Sainte-Beuve
in his second manner.
III. The third tendency of the century Is _Realistic Art_, with
physiological characteristics. It finds its support in positivist
philosophy; Herbart in Germany, Bentham and Mill in England, Comte and
Littre in France.
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