(I) Many Romantic writers in Europe were preoccupied with the fact and idea of revolution. (II) For instance, in the early period of the French Revolution, all the leading English Romantics were in sympathy with it. (III) In fact, they were among its most fervent adherents. (IV) Through the greater part of the eighteenth century, man had been viewed as a limited being in a strictly ordered and essentially unchanging world. (V) Later, even after the first enthusiastic expectations had been disappointed by the events in France, the younger writers felt that its example still constituted humanity's best hope.