All history is an ennobling study, alike in its events and its examples; but life is short, and it is the French Revolution that commences the period of history of deepest importance to the present age. Beyond that chasm, so rudely severing the old world of Europe from the new, lies the realm of the historian; on this side begins a drama of opinions and events constituting by far the most useful field of study in secular and political knowledge. Changed since then, and still changing, as are the territorial arrangements of Europe, the conquests of Napoleon contributed greatly to the rise of the principle of Nationality which is now the great power at work in the alteration of boundaries and the shaping of kingdoms. It is true, Napoleon meant to conquer only for himself and for France. He sought to found a vast empire, with vassal kingdoms under the rule of his brothers and relatives. But in establishing this empire, he swept away a great deal of the obstructive rubbish of the former time. By expelling the Germans from Italy, and also by creating a titular King of Rome, he paved the way for the subsequent aspirations and movement of the Italians in favour of nationality and independence, which have at length borne their full fruits in the establishment of a free and united Italy. In like manner, by sweeping away a whole host of petty princedoms in Germany, he simplified the subsequent course of events towards a unification of Germany; while the iron despotism which he exercised in that country first compelled all Germans to feel the tie of brotherhood, in the glorious uprising of the Fatherland in 1813 against the foreign foe. Poland, too, during the ascendancy of Napoleon, temporarily (but only for the great conqueror's own purposes) regained in part its old existence, thereby keeping alive the hope for renewed independence; a hope which, improbable as our expectations may seem, we think will yet be realized amid the great trouble, and changes impending over the Continent. But still more memorable, and worthy of thoughtful study, are the times of the French Revolution, from the influence which they have produced upon the current of political, social, and religious thought, in subsequent times. A whole flood of new ideas, principles, and opinions was then poured upon the world. Some of these were wise and good, others were detestable, but nearly all of them were given to the world in so crude a form and in so savage or ruthless a spirit, as to make them as a whole so repulsive that even yet some of their excellencies are but little known or acknowledged. Every one recognises, however, the vast influence which that grand and terrible Revolution has exercised upon the whole current of subsequent thought; and if Europe has yet to undergo one more great upheaving of democratic revolution (as we believe it has), we may rely upon it that some of the more extreme and, at present, all but forgotten dogmas of the first revolution will