We have not left ourselves much room to glance at the three interesting papers in this volume, on the subject of the two French Revolutions of 1830 and 1848. They will be read with profound attention by thousands who may have passed them over cursorily in their anonymous original form; because Mr Alison’s profound and intimate knowledge of the working of French diplomacy, of the turbulent and dangerous element which lies, like molten lava, beneath the surface of French society, and of the secret causes of those outrages which, from time to time, have shaken that unhappy country, must needs give an additional assurance of their value. It is curious to observe how entirely the speculations of the author, as to the consequences which might arise from the first of those sudden revolutions, are borne out by the marvellous issue of the second. The falsity of the system which made the stability of a government and the existence of a dynasty mainly depend upon the doubtful adherence, and still more doubtful valour, of a civic National Guard, was clearly pointed out and exposed at the time when the Liberal press of England was loud in its approbation of the citizen soldiers who had violated their oaths, and the citizen king, who, more fortunate than his worthless father, had succeeded in supplanting his kinsman and rightful sovereign. “Of the numerous delusions,” wrote Mr Alison in 1831, “which have overspread the world in such profusion during the last nine months, there is none so extraordinary and so dangerous as the opinion incessantly inculcated by the revolutionary press, that the noblest virtue in regular soldiers is to prove themselves traitors to their oaths; and that a _national guard_ is the only safe and constitutional force to which arms can be intrusted. The troops of the line, whose revolt decided the three days in July in favour of the revolutionary party, have been the subject of the most extravagant eulogium from the Liberal press throughout Europe; and even in this country, the Government journals have not hesitated to condemn, in no measured terms, the Royal Guard, merely because they adhered, amidst a nation’s treason, to their honour and their oaths.