Britain, ever recognised as the guardian of true liberty, had viewed, with mingled feelings of horror, pity, and alarm, the crimes which alike stained and inaugurated the French Revolution. Our Government, unhappily, mistaking the real nature and critical importance of the contest, granted a feeble and tardy aid to the few remaining friends of order, chiefly represented in the Royalists, who still struggled for existence in France. Had these succours been commensurate with the ability of the nation, and afforded promptly and liberally, France might have been saved from many of those dire calamities which, like the judgments of Heaven, gathering in her political horizon, were so soon to visit her in the fury of the tempest, to cast a blight upon her people and a curse upon her fair plains. Europe, moreover, might have escaped the military tyranny of Napoleon, with all its accompanying evils. Toulon, the principal station for the French Navy on the shores of the Mediterranean, possessed of large arsenals and extensive dockyards, and strongly fortified—its citizens had hitherto regarded with aversion the excesses of blood and rapine in which the Revolutionists had indulged, and fully sensible of the evils which must arise from the rule of the democracy, resolved to declare for the restoration of the old monarchy. In the impending contest in which they were soon involved by their resistance to the iron will of the Committee of Public Salvation, who then assumed to rule France, they invoked, and not altogether in vain, the aid of the constitutional Governments around. Accordingly, a mixed force of British, Spaniards, and Italians, was thrown into the city for its defence. The second battalion of the Royals formed part of the British contingent on this occasion. Lieutenant-General O’Hara commanding, with 12,000 men, for awhile succeeded in making good the defence, and had well nigh baffled the utmost efforts of the besiegers, who, under General Dugommier, had assembled an army of nearly 40,000 Revolutionists. But the appearance of a young officer in the ranks of the enemy speedily changed the aspect of affairs. As chief of the artillery, by a series of bold and judicious movements, effecting the reduction of the city, he early displayed that aptness for military combination which revealed the genius of Napoleon Bonaparte. Dugommier, writing to the Convention, said—“Reward and promote that young man, for, if you are ungrateful towards him, he will raise himself alone.” The following incident, narrated by Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., in his interesting account of the siege, introduces us to another of those great military chiefs who were so soon to glitter in the firmament of the Empire: “Napoleon asked him what he could do for him. ‘Everything,’ replied the young private, blushing with emotion, and touching his left shoulder with his hand—‘you can turn this worsted into an epaulet.’ A few days after, Napoleon sent for the same soldier to order him to