Glass harmonica Franklin and a fellow of the Royal Society, extended the experiments of Pockrich, contriving a set of glasses better tuned and easier to play. During the same decade, Christoph Willibald Gluck also attracted attention playing a similar instrument in England. Benjamin Franklin invented a radically new arrangement of the glasses in 1761 after seeing water-filled wine glasses played by Edmund Delaval at Cambridge in England in May 1761. Franklin worked with London glassblower Charles James to build one, and it had its world premiere in early 1762, played by Marianne Davies. Writing to his friend Giambatista Beccaria in Turin, Italy,
18th-century French literature movement, which emerged in reaction to the first movement; the beginnings of Romanticism, which exalted the role of emotion in art and life. In common with a similar movement in England at the same time, the writers of 18th century France were critical, skeptical and innovative. Their lasting contributions were the ideas of liberty, toleration, humanitarianism, equality, and progress, which became the ideals of modern western democracy. The 18th century saw the gradual weakening of the absolute monarchy constructed by Louis XIV. Its power slipped away during the Regency of Philippe d'Orléans, (1715–1723) and the long regime of King Louis