But their limitations were to be transcended, and account taken of facts and aspects which their philosophy had ignored or minimised.

The value of the reactionary movement lay in pressing these facts and aspects on the attention, in reopening chambers of the human spirit which the age of Voltaire had locked and sealed.
The idea of Progress was particularly concerned in the general change of attitude, intellectual and emotional, towards the Middle Ages.

A fresh interest in the great age of the Church was a natural part of the religious revival, but extended far beyond the circle of ardent Catholics.

It was a characteristic feature, as every one knows, of the Romantic movement.

It did not affect only creative literature, it occupied speculative thinkers and stimulated historians.