ffering in the realm of art "the eternal
duality of strength and grace," like Michael Angelo and Raphael; the one
inspiring the fear and the other the love of God, yet both seeing in the
Christian religion the highest hopes of the world. The internal history
of this period centres around those pious mystics of whom Madame Guyon
was the representative, and those inquiring intellectual Jansenists who
had defied the Jesuits, but were finally crushed by an intolerant
government. The lamentable dispute between Bossuet and Fenelon also then
occurred, which led to the disgrace of the latter,--as banishment to his
diocese was regarded. But in his exile his moral influence was increased
rather than diminished; while the publication of his "Telemaque," made
without his consent from a copy that had been abstracted from him, won
him France and Europe, though it rendered Louis XIV. forever
irreconcilable. Bossuet did not long survive the banishment of his
rival, and died in 1704, a month before Bourdaloue, and two years before
Bayle. France intellectually, under the despotic intolerance of the
King, was going through an eclipse or hastening to a dissolution, while
the material state of the country showed signs of approaching
bankruptcy. The people were exhausted by war and taxes, and all the
internal improvements which Colbert had stimulated were neglected. "The
fisheries of Normandy were ruined, and the pasture lands of Alsace were
taken from the peasantry. Picardy lost a twelfth part of its population;
many large cities were almost abandoned. In Normandy, out of seven
hundred thousand people, there were but fifty thousand who did not sleep
on straw. The linen manufactures of Brittany were destroyed by the heavy
duties; Touraine lost one-fourth of her population; the silk trade of
Tours was ruined; the population of Troyes fell from sixty thousand to
twenty thousand; Lyons lost twenty thousand souls since the beginning
of the war."

In spite of these calamities the blinded King prepared for another
exhausting war, in order to put his grandson on the throne of Spain.
This last and most ruinous of all his wars might have been averted if he
only could have cast away his ambition and his pride. Humbled and
crippled, he yet could not part with the prize which fell to his family
by the death of Carlos II. of Spain. But Europe was determined that the
Bourbons should not be further aggrandized.

Thus in 1701 war broke out with even intens