The closing period of the eighteenth century has already been given to the world by a historian equal to the magnitude of his subject. The “History of the French Revolution,” by Alison, will never be superseded. The extent of its information, the clearness of its details, the freshness and fidelity of its descriptions, and the force and vividness of its language, place it at the head of all contemporary annals. But we should wish also to see a History of the whole preceding portion of the century. The French Revolution was a result: we should desire to see the origin. It was a burst of gigantic violence, and gigantic strength: we should desire to have the primal _myth_ of this assault of the Titans; the narrative of their growth, their passions, and their powers, until the moment when they moved against the battlements of all that was lofty, magnificent, and glittering in the land. There is nothing without a cause on earth,—accident is a name which has no place in the Providential supremacy of things. To investigate the sources of even the common events of nature, is a subject worthy of the philosopher. But there never was a time when it was more important to connect its mightier changes with the mystery in which they find their birth; to ascertain the laws of national convulsion; to fix the theory of moral storms and inundations. Such would be among the highest services, as they might administer to the most effective security of the social system. It strikes us, that our chief historians have hitherto limited their view too much to England: a broader view would have been more productive. The combinations of this great country with the Continental kingdoms; the contrasts furnished by them all; the variety in their means of working out the same object of national power; their comparative tardiness; even their failures, would have supplied new conceptions of history, and have added alike to the illustration and the interest of that political science which is among the noblest bequests of a great nation to posterity. We are fully convinced that politics, rightly examined, will be found to constitute a _system_, as much as astronomy, and that a _solitary_ kingdom would be as much a contradiction to nature as a solitary star. We now glance over the pages of these volumes: they are very amusing. If they do not give the court _costumes_ of a hundred years ago, they give the mental costumes. The witty and the wise, the great and the little, pass before the eye with the rapidity and the oddity of the figures in a show-box. Kings, queens, and courtiers are exhibited to the life; and, harsh as their physiognomies may sometimes seem, the exhibition is always amusing.