If Mr Kinglake was unsparing in his denunciations of French intrigue, he is no less bold and outspoken in criticising the military merits of our allies. But we no longer find the same reasons for dissenting from his conclusions. Many, no doubt, will say that it would have been politic to suppress some of those revelations which will jar most on the sensitive ears of our neighbours. But, if history is to be written at all, it must be written with all the truth attainable. History, which conceals and glosses, is but historical romance. Moreover, a plain English statement was wanting to redress the balance between us and the French. It must not be forgotten that the example of writing a narrative apportioning to both parties in the alliance the sum of glory gained was set in France, and that a share, ridiculously small, was awarded to the English. We remonstrated at the time, in these pages, against the unfairness and impolicy of allowing such a book as De Bazancourt’s to go forth to the world with the seeming sanction of the Emperor, at a time when the war was yet unfinished. A man of no reputation or ability to justify the selection had been accredited to the French generals in the Crimea. Furnished thus with information, which might be presumed to be reliable, he produced a narrative in which the entire credit for the planning and execution of the successful operations of the war was assigned to the French with impudent mendacity. As might naturally be expected from a nation that believes in Thiers, his account was accepted by the French as veritable history. In England it was but little read. Contemptible as a composition, its representations of facts were not such as to give it a claim to which nothing else entitled it. But, so far as it was read here, it gave just offence. That the Emperor did not disapprove is shown by the fact that the same valuable chronicler was taken to Italy as historiographer of the war in 1859, when another compound of bombastic glorification and misrepresentation was given to the world under imperial auspices. No Englishman or candid Frenchman who reads the account of the Crimean Campaign by the Baron De Bazancourt will deny that it was incumbent on us to tell our own tale; and we rejoice that it is told by one who, with such remarkable faculty for charming an audience and imparting to it his own impressions, trusts, nevertheless, to facts and proofs derived from the documents intrusted to him, for supporting his claim for justice.