composed, and painted word-pictures that piously satirised the types and
the eccentrics of his day. Malebranche, reconsidering what Descartes had
thought and revitalising his conclusions, arranged in his _Research
after Truth_ a complete system of spiritualist and idealistic
philosophy which he rendered clear, in spite of its depth,
and extremely attractive owing to the merits of his powerful and
facile imagination and of his rich, copious, and elastic style, that
attained the happy mean between conversation and instruction. But five
writers of the highest rank came into the perennial forefront, attracting
and retaining general attention: Pascal, Bossuet, Mme. de Sevigne,
La Bruyere, and Fenelon.

PASCAL.--Pascal, a scholar and also by scientific education
mathematician, geometrician, physician, turned, not to letters
which he scorned, but to the exposition of those religious ideas which at
the age of thirty-three were precious to him. To defend his friends the
Jansenists against their foes the Jesuits, he wrote _The Provincial
Letters_ (1656), which have often been regarded as the foremost
monument of classic French prose; such is not our view, but they
certainly form a masterpiece of argument, of dialectics, of irony, of
humour, of eloquence, and are throughout couched in a magnificent style.
Dying whilst still young, he left notes on various subjects, more
particularly religion, philosophy, and morality, which have been
collected under the title of _Thoughts_ and are the product of a
great Christian philosopher, of a profound moralist, of a marvellously
concise orator, and also of a poet who lacked neither acute sensitiveness
nor vast and imposing imagination.

BOSSUET.--Bossuet is universally admitted to be the king of French
orators; all his life he preached with a serious, imposing, vast,