again appear on the scene; including, we regret to say, that terrible development of infidelity and materialism, against which even Robespierre himself, with his firm belief in the Supreme Being and a future life, was unable successfully to contend. That storm of blasphemy and utter scepticism, in its worst features at least, soon blew over--and let us trust that such will be the case again; but any one who has watched the turn of thought on the Continent, and in Germany even more than in France, must expect any new outburst of democratic revolution to be accompanied by a manifesto of infidelity and an attempt to banish religion from the fabric and principles of society, in a manner only too similar to that which formed the worst feature of the first French Revolution. The first Earl of Malmesbury was in public life, for the greater part of the time holding the highest diplomatic appointments abroad, during the whole course of these momentous events. From a vantage-ground enjoyed by few men either of this or any other country, he beheld the Courts and peoples of Europe both before the deluge and after it; and although he withdrew from public office before the termination of the great war with France, he continued to the end to be confidentially consulted by the Ministers of the time. The first of the two works whose titles are prefixed is by far the most valuable and important. All the leading men of the day--monarchs, statesmen, and generals--figure constantly in the diaries and correspondence. The work has been quoted with advantage to history by some of our ablest writers, and not least so by Lord Stanhope, in his 'Life of Pitt.' It constitutes a mine of historical and political facts; and though published too late to be made use of by our chief historians of the French war and of the immediately preceding times of the Empress Catherine and Frederick the Great, its value is fully recognised by the writers of the personal and political memoirs which have recently issued from the press. The second of the works on our list is of a lighter character, in which the incidents of fashionable life mingle largely with matters of State and Parliamentary politics. The one work shows us the grand movements of the time, the other gives us the bye-play. The latter, to which we chiefly confine our remarks, is a selection from private letters received by three generations of the Harris family. They are confidential exchanges of intelligence and ideas, in which the hopes and fears, the expectations, disappointments, and impressions of our ancestors are given in the very words in which they were described. The noble editor of these letters calls them 'waifs of the past,' but they possess a twofold interest, firstly, as illustrating the opinions and social habits of that past time; and secondly, they are reliable indications of what public feeling was at their date with regard to politics, society, and the general condition of our own and foreign countries:--