How can we explain the fact that we feel something in common with the Campagna romana? And the high mountain chain?
Chateaubriand in a letter to M. de Fontanes in 1803 writes his first impression of the Campagna romana.
The President de Brosses says of the Campagna romana: "Il fallait que Romulus fût ivre quand il songea à bâtir une ville dans un terrain aussi laid."
Even Delacroix would have nothing to do with Rome, it frightened him. He loved Venice, just as Shakespeare, Byron, and Georges Sand did. Théophile Gautier's and Richard Wagner's dislike of Rome must not be forgotten.
Lamartine has the language for Sorrento and Posilippo.
Victor Hugo raves about Spain, "parce que aucune autre nation n'a moins emprunté à l'antiquité, parce qu'elle n'a subi aucune influence classique."
104.
The two great attempts that were made to overcome the eighteenth century:
Napoleon, in that he called man, the soldier, and the great struggle for power, to life again, and conceived Europe as a political power.
Goethe, in that he imagined a European culture which would consist of the whole heritage of what humanity had attained to up to his time.