On the first arrival of the intelligence, we involuntarily asked ourselves, "Can this be a reality?" And when we could no longer doubt the evidence of the fact, the next anxious inquiry which pressed itself upon us, was "Will it stand, or are we again to be disappointed as we were by the revolution of 1789?" This is not a question of mere idle and speculative curiosity with regard to which we are indifferent about the result. It is one in which our feelings are keenly interested; and more--it is one of deep and awful import to the liberties of the world. For if France is again to revolve through years and through seas of blood and crime, and to terminate, at last, at the point from which she set out--a despotism--despair will fill the European world, and the people will be disposed rather to bear the ills they have, than to encounter the unavailing horrors of the double precedent which France will have set. Let us look, therefore, calmly, for a few moments, at the very interesting question of the probable stability and success of this revolution. Those of us who remember the revolution of 1789, are forcibly reminded of it by the late event, and from the catastrophe of the former struggle, are apt to draw a mournful presage of the present. It is not for human penetration to foretell, with certainty, the ultimate issue of such a movement. In a case so dependent on the capricious passions of man, there are too many contingencies that may arise to darken the fairest prospect and disappoint our hopes. But there seem to be fundamental points of difference between the two cases which forbid us to reason from the one to the other, and justify, now, the hope of a happy result. Let us attend for a moment to these points of difference. In the first place, the state of political information in France, and in Europe at large, is widely different now from that which existed in 1789. France was not prepared for that revolution: nor were the people of Europe prepared to understand it, to second it, and to turn it to the best account. This is a grand and over-ruling distinction between the cases. With regard to France, her people had been buried, for ages, in the night of despotism, and had no idea of the meaning of political liberty. I speak of the great body of the people. On the upper classes, it is true, that day had recently broken from the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and Raynal. But thick darkness still rested upon the lower classes. Their faculties were benumbed by its influence, and their spirits enslaved and debased by the habit of subjection. The condition of things which they saw around them, and which had been immemorially transmitted from father to son, seemed to them to be the natural condition, and they considered themselves born for the use of their prince and his nobles.