[Footnote: Bonald indeed in his treatise De pouvoir adopted the idea of development and applied it to religion (as Newman did afterwards) for the purpose of condemning the Reformation as a retrograde movement.] 3.
Along with the discovery of the Middle Ages came the discovery of German literature.

In the intellectual commerce between the two countries in the age of Frederick the Great, France had been exclusively the giver, Germany the recipient.

It was due, above all, to Madame de Stael that the tide began to flow the other way.

Among the writers of the Napoleonic epoch, Madame de Stael is easily first in critical talent and intellectual breadth.

Her study of the Revolution showed a more dispassionate appreciation of that convulsion than any of her contemporaries were capable of forming.