The literature of the second half of the seventeenth century was monarchical, Christian, classical. The eighteenth century was to lose the spirit of classical art while retaining many of its forms, to overthrow the domination of the Church, to destroy the monarchy. It was an age not of great art but of militant ideas, which more and more came to utilise art as their vehicle. Political speculation, criticism, science, sceptical philosophy invaded literature. The influence of England--of English free-thinkers, political writers, men of science, essayists, novelists, poets--replaced the influence of Italy and Spain, and for long that of the models of ancient Greece and Rome. The century of the philosophers was eminently social and mundane; the _salons_ revived; a new preciosity came into fashion; but as time went on the _salons_ became rather the mart of ideas philosophical and scientific than of the daintinesses of letters and of art. Journalism developed, and thought tended to action, applied itself directly to public life. While the work of destructive criticism proceeded, the bases of a moral reconstruction were laid; the free play of intellect was succeeded by a great enfranchisement of the passions; the work of Voltaire was followed by the work of Rousseau. Before the close of the reign of Louis XIV. the old order of things had suffered a decline. War, famine, public debt, oppressive taxation had discredited the monarchy. A dull hypocrisy hardly disguised the gross licentiousness of the times. The revocation of the edict of Nantes had exiled those Protestants who formed a substantial part of the moral conscience of France. The bitter feud of brother-bishops, Bossuet and Fenelon, hurling defiance against each other for the love of God, had made religion a theme for mockery. Port-Royal, once the refuge of serious faith and strict morals, was destroyed. The bull _Unigenitus_ expelled the spiritual element from French Christianity, reduced the clergy to a state of intellectual impotence, and made a lasting breach between them and the better part of the laity. Meanwhile the scientific movement had been proving its power. Science had come to fill the place left void by religion. The period of the Regency (1715-23) is one of transition from the past to the newer age, shameless in morals, degraded in art; the period of Voltaire followed, when intellect sapped and mined the old beliefs; with Rousseau came the explosion of sentiment and an effort towards reconstruction. A great political and social revolution closed the century.