M. Blanc's book, notwithstanding a certain air of pretension in the style of its getting up, in the very mediocre illustrations, and in the tone of the introductory pages, is substantially an unassuming performance. It is a compilation, and contains little that is not to be found printed elsewhere. At the same time, perhaps in no other work are the same events and details thrown together in so compact and entertaining a form. The author troubles us with few comments of his own, and his reserve in this respect enhances the merit of his book, for when he departs from it his views are somewhat strained and ultra-French. But his narrative is spiritedly put together; and although it will be found, upon comparison, that he has, for the most part, faithfully adhered to high historical authorities, to the exclusion of mere traditionary matter and of imaginative embellishment, yet the dramatic interest of the subject is itself so vivid, that the book reads like a romance. The Russian history, even to our own day, is a sanguinary and cruel chronicle. Its brevity is its best excuse. The youth of the country extenuates the crimes of its children. For if the strides of Russia have been vast and rapid in the paths of civilisation, we must bear in mind that it is but very recently the progress began. "At the commencement of the eighteenth century," says M. Blanc, "it had certainly been very difficult to foresee that fifty years later a magnificent and polite court would be established on the Gulf of Finland; that soldiers raised on the banks of the Volga and the Don would rank with the best disciplined troops; and that an empire, of itself larger than all the rest of Europe, would have passed from a state of barbarism to one of civilisation as advanced as that of the most favoured European states." This is overshooting the mark, and is an exaggeration even a hundred years after the date assigned. If the civilisation of St Petersburg has for some time vied with that of London or Paris, Russia, as a country, has even now much to do before she can be placed on a footing with England or France in refinement and intellectual cultivation. It is difficult to institute a comparison in a case where the nature of the countries, the characters of the nations, and the circumstances of their rise, are, and have been, so dissimilar. The investigation might easily entail a disquisition of a length that would leave very little room for an examination of the book in hand. And all that we seek in the present instance to establish will be readily conceded--namely, that in the throes of a country accomplishing with unprecedented rapidity the passage, usually so gradual, from barbarism to civilisation, some palliation is to be found for the faults and vices of her nobles and rulers, and for the blood-stains disfiguring her annals.