This volume deals with the events of “The Hundred Days,” giving a graphic picture of the incidents which occured between the return of Napoleon from Elba and his final overthrow at Waterloo. It is much more minute than any other history of the period, and occasionally gives elaborate descriptions of persons and occurrences unworthy of being rescued from the oblivion of their unimportance. Lamartine evidently dislikes both Napoleon and Napoleonism. The leading object of the present volume is to prove that France was sick of him, and that the army alone was in his favor. One passage seems a palpable hit at the usurpation of the “Nephew of my Uncle.” “If the people,” says Lamartine, “did not protest by civic opposition, they protested very generally by their sorrow and estrangement. _History never recorded more audacity in_ _the usurpation of a throne, or a more cowardly submission of a nation to_ _an army._ France lost on that day somewhat of its character, the law or its majesty, the liberty of its respect. Military despotism was substituted for public opinion. The pretorians made a mockery of the people. The Lower Empire of Rome enacted in Gaul one of those scenes which degrade history, and humiliate human nature. _The only excuse_ for such an event is that the people were depressed under ten years of military government, that the army was rendered frantic by ten years of prodigies, and that its idol was a hero.” For the Bourbons, Lamartine evinces a tender regard, and narrates their flight from France in a style of mental bombast which but ill rescues it from ridicule. The description of the Congress of Vienna is very brilliant, and the sketches of Talleyrand, Fouche, and Wellington, discriminating and powerful. The sentimentality of the author gives, as usual, its peculiar perversion to the facts of the narrative; things are commonly represented in their relation to the opinions of Lamartine, rather than in their relation to each other; and occasionally gross fictions are introduced to add to the scenic effect.