To all such rationalism, however, a strong check was set up for a whole generation, especially in England, by the universal reaction against the French Revolution. Hitherto the upper classes, there as in France, had been noted mainly for unbelief in religious matters; but when it was seen from the course of the Revolution that heterodoxy could join hands with democracy, there was a rapid change of front, on the simple ground of class interest. During the first generation of the nineteenth century, accordingly, all English freethinking was either driven under the social surface or classed as disreputable, so that it was possible to assume a great revival of faith. In France, similarly, the literary pietism of Chateaubriand seemed to have crowned with success the official restoration of the Church's authority; and even the intellectual revival was associated with Christian zeal on the part of such energetic personalities as Guizot. Even in Germany, though there the work of Biblical criticism on rationalist lines went steadily on, there was a pietist revival. Before the middle of the century was reached, however, it was clear that in France and Germany rationalism was in full renascence; and in England, where such facts are less readily avowed, scholarly writings even in the fourth decade had begun to prove the solidarity of European culture. As regards Biblical criticism, there appears to be a certain periodicity of action. In the eighteenth century, when the work done was mainly of the common-sense order, the French physician Jean Astruc laid down a basis for exact documentary analysis by pointing to the two elements of Yahwist (Jehovist) and Elohist narrative as indicating two distinct sources. On such lines the earlier German scholars of the nineteenth century long laboured, till the common-sense criticism was lost sight of. In the meantime, however, a long line of partially rationalist criticism of the New Testament culminated in the Life of Jesus by Strauss; and educated Christendom was shaken to its foundations, insofar as it ventured to read. Side by side with that of Strauss, there proceeded in Germany a great movement of documentary and historical analysis, till professional theology there became almost identified with the surrender of Christian supernaturalism.