brands them; 'they, on the contrary, hailed the Italian and German revolutions with all the unquestioning faith of illinformed philanthropy; by slow degrees and with painful reluc tance they opened their eyes to the truth, and that they have not yet discovered its extent, and not yet abandoned all hope, is distinctly proved by the fact that the noble Lord, whose conduct we have so frequently deplored, yet retains his place at her Majesty's council-board. That Mr. Baxter has no taste may be his own misfortune, and is of little consequence to any one else; and that he prefers eating oranges in the trattoria' to seeing palaces, is very natural for any bailie who is not a grocer. At Caserta, one of the most splendid and strikingly situated palaces in Europe, he sees little to admire excepting a toilette-table and glass made from one piece of marble.' But we have not leisure for more of his virtu. This philosophical Radical is a strenuous stickler for the equal rights of man, his inherent dignity and inalienable birthright of freedom; and unquestionably he is very tenacious of his own dignity and very intolerant of any encroachment upon it. He has no patience with the liberal regulations of aristocratical Austria. He embarks on board a steamer belonging to the Austrian Lloyd's Company, bound for Constantinople :- 'It was nightfall, but we could distinguish tall Albanians pacing backwards and forwards, attended by dirty servants, a group of disreputable-looking people standing by the wheel, several Greek and Turkish families squatting on the planks, provided with mattresses, cooking utensils, onions, black bread, &c. &c. Not only rich Egyptians and Arabs, but also Albanian nobles and Greek merchants, who have houses in London and possess great wealth, travel as deck passengers on board the steamers in the East. French and English captains of course compel these folks to be content with the accommodation for which they pay; but the Austrian Lloyd's Company permit them to mingle freely with first-class travellers, nay, often to monopolise the poop-deck. This practice is most reprehensible. How can ladies walk on a deck which is crowded with dirty Greeks eating garlic and onions, and with little insects of a troublesome nature? For gentlemen it matters not; but let no English female set foot on board an Austrian steamer in the Levant.'-p. 217. We are, we own, not a little amused at this complaint. A gentleman of Mr. Baxter's beau ideal of that character may be quite indifferent as to little insects; but ladies' must not so much as breathe the same air (for it is their presence on the deck that is objected to) which is contaminated by the presence of rich Egyptians, Albanian nobles, and Greek merchants, who have houses in London, and who possess great wealth.' · An An old schoolfellow of Canning and Frere invited them to come to hear him preach one of his first sermons. 'Well,' said he-as they walked home afterwards-' and how did you like it?' Excellently,' said Canning; but I thought your discourse rather a short one.'- Why, really,' said the preacher, much flattered, 'I was resolved not to be long-I was afraid of being tedious. Oh,' rejoined Canning, but you were tedious.' We will not leave Mr. Baxter without bestowing all the approbation in our power. His volume is not long, though it is tedious. He dispatches the history of Europe, its present condition, commercial, political, and religious, with its prospects and future destiny, in 380 loosely printed pages of an octavo volume. ART. XI.-1. Pourquoi la Révolution d'Angleterre a-t-elle réussi? Discours sur l'Histoire de la Révolution d'Angleterre, Par M. Guizot. Paris. 1850. 2. Histoire de la Révolution de 1848. Par Alphonse de Lamartine. 2 vols. Paris. 1849. 3. Pages d'Histoire de la Révolution de Février 1848. Par Louis Blanc. Bruxelles. 1850. 4. Mémoires du Citoyen Caussidière, Ex-Préfet de Police et Représentant du Peuple. 2 vols. London. 1848. 5. Les Conspirateurs. Par Adolphe Chenu, Ex-Capitaine des Gardes du Cit. Caussidière. Pp. 223. Paris. 1850. 6. La Naissance de la République en Février 1848. Par Lucien De la Hodde. Pp. 110. Paris. 1850. 7. A Review of the French Revolution of 1848, from the 24th of February to the Election of the First President. By Capt. Chamier, R.N. 2 vols. London. 1849. Τ IT may seem at first sight strange that we should bring into the same view M. Guizot's grave, eloquent, and high-toned lucubrations on English History, with works of so opposite a character as the spawn of the late French Revolution; but in truth there is a real, and by no means obscure, relation between them. M. Guizot's work, though its proper and more prominent merit is the masterly view that he takes of the Grand Rebellion, the Restoration, and the Revolution in England, all of which are treated in language that must be universally admired, and a spirit that will be pretty generally approved,-M. Guizot's work, we say, has obviously the arrière pensée-if, indeed, it was not the first motive-of contributing to the instruction of his own countrymen ; countrymen; and his theme of Why the English Revolution has succeeded,' is but a contrasted exposition of why the French Revolution has failed, and a very significant lesson as to how it may be made ultimately to succeed : 'Sixty years ago France entered on the path [of revolution, formerly] opened by England; and Europe lately rushed headlong in the same direction. It is my purpose to show what are the causes which have crowned constitutional monarchy in England, and republican government in the United States, with that solid and lasting success which France and the rest of Europe are still vainly pursuing, through those mysterious trials and revolutionary struggles, which, according as they are well or ill passed through, elevate or pervert a nation for ages. Two centuries have elapsed since the English Republic put to death King Charles I., and, in a few short years, crumbled to dust on the soil still wet with the blood it had shed. The French Republic has since exhibited the same spectacle. And we still hear it said that these great crimes were acts of a great policy; that they were enjoined by the necessity of founding those Republics which hardly survived them a day!'-Guizot, p. 1. The English Revolution succeeded because it was made by the intelligent classes of society, under a pressing necessity, going no farther than the removal of the specific danger, and doing so by the least possible deviation from the existing system-or, to use a shorter formula, our Revolution succeeded because it was as little as could be of a revolution. The French Revolution has failed in all its various stages because it was blind, wanton, and sweeping-made by the wildest heads, the most depraved hearts, and the dirtiest hands that the intoxicated country could supply, and on no principle but that of overturning and departing from, as far as possible, every thing that existed. And assuredly nothing could come more opportunely for the elucidation of M. Guizot's general views than the publication of these revolutionary Memoirs-they are, as it were, the pièces justificatives of his didactic conclusions. It is as if we had the pregnant brevity of Tacitus, illustrated by the confessions of Vinius and Laco and the mutual delations of Crispus and Faustus. If we were to consider M. Guizot's work abstractedly and as a mere historical essay, we should have to suggest some doubts, and to make some reserves, in our general concurrence with his statements and opinions: for instance, we must have insisted on a most important consideration, which (strangely enough) M. Guizot does not allude to, which is, that about the time when our Revolution gave such permanent weight to the principle of popular representation, there began almost simultaneously simultaneously that countervailing system by which the House of Commons itself was made indirectly sensible of the influence of the aristocracy and the Crown; and Gatton, Old Sarum, and their fellows helped to maintain the practical balance of the constitution against what would otherwise have become a single absorbing and irresistible power. The Reform Bill deranged, and in a great measure destroyed, that moderating influence, which, however, was and is so vitally necessary to the co-ordination of monarchy with popular representation, that the monarchy is now existing only on its remnants; and we must, therefore, confess that we by no means take the flattering view which M. Guizot does of the stability of our constitutional system. Gratefully acknowledging that the Revolution of 1688 was followed by upwards of a century and a half of unprecedented order, freedom, and prosperity-we have the strongest apprehensions that the democratic tendencies of all our recent measures are preparing a certain-not slow, and yet we hope not violent-passage to a different state of things. We fear that M. Guizot may be the last that will have to congratulate us on the wise stability of our political and religious institutions. The first thing that strikes us in the memoirs of these heroes of the February Revolution is that they should prove themselves and their colleagues to have all been such poor creatures. Some of them we know have individual talents. One is a poet, another an astronomer-this a sharp lawyer, that a lively journalist, and so forth; but for the duties into which they were hoisted on the 24th of February they were all ridiculously, or rather as France has found it deplorably, incapable. They had begun they knew not what, and to go on with it, they knew not how. Terrible to everybody, they were most so to each other; and now that they have fallen into general contempt, each of them is ready to confess that all, except himself, deserve it. The sentimental Robespierre, Marat the friend of the people, Danton the bold, and Chaumette the brutal, had a kind of maniacal faith in their revolutionary vocation-they were in earnest—they were enthusiasts, and reached the sublime of guilt and terror. Their pale shadows in the last Revolution-the Lamartines, Louis Blancs, Ledru Rollins, and Caussidières-have neither the sincerity, the energy, nor the ferocity of the old Jacobins. Their hearts were neither bad enough nor their heads good enough to rival the ancient masters-they could get no nearer to them than the lapels of their waistcoats; and were, in truth, no better than the accidental authors and very indifferent actors of a kind of Tom Thumb parody of the great tragedy. But their farce has had awful consequences. In their rashness, rashness, inexperience, and incapacity these mountebanks set fire to the theatre, and though they have escaped with their own lives, thousands of other more valuable lives and millions of property have been lost in the conflagration; and what is still worse, though they are out-the fire is not. The next most striking feature of these memoirs is, that three such prominent actors in the revolution as Lamartine, Louis Blanc, and Caussidière should have added so little to its real and so much to its fabulous history. What is new in their works is not true-what is true is not new. It is evident that they write, not to lay open the real springs of the affair, but to conceal them. The works themselves are marked, of course, with the individual characters of the men. Lamartine's is eau sucrée, Louis Blanc's aigre-doux, while Caussidière's savours more strongly of the ardent spirit; but however different their styles, they are all pervaded by one common characteristic, an extravagance-we had almost said impudence-of personal vanity, which neither a miraculous elevation could satisfy, nor an abject and ridiculous discomfiture abate; they are all three as much astonished at their fall as the rest of mankind were at their rise. What Pascal says of the general disregard of truth is peculiarly applicable to them: Il y a différens degrés dans cette aversion pour la vérité; mais on peut dire qu'elle est dans tous, parcequ'elle est inséparable de leur amour propre.' We are not so absurd as to complain of egotism in memoirs, and especially in apologetical memoirs. It is their essence. We therefore opened the volumes, expecting that these gentlemen were to talk largely and favourably of themselves; but we were not prepared for so entire a lack of new matter, such a deluge of garrulous amour propre so inordinate and so blind a profusion of self-glorification. We say blind, because, in fact, any man of sense must see that all this self-applause, which turns-in the cases of Lamartine and Caussidière altogether, and in that of Louis Blanc mainly -on their wonderful, their superhuman exertions to preserve society from the extremities of plunder and massacre, involves also a heavy weight of self-condemnation on themselves, who had evoked and let loose the elements of massacre and plunder. It is as if a crew of mutineers, having set fire to a ship, should make a merit of having endeavoured to put out the flames when they menaced their own destruction. The praise of having worked hard-sometimes by speeches and puppet-shows, sometimes by force and terror, and still oftener by deception and intrigue to maintain themselves in their sovereign dignities, we willingly concede to them; but beyond that motive, in which self |