_London, February 28th, 1848._--The French Revolution has driven for the time every other subject out of thought, and so astounding has the event been, so awful and surprising from its inconceivable rapidity and the immensity of the operation, that every mind has been kept in a restless whirl and tumult incompatible with calm reflexion; while from the quick succession of events crowding on each other, all dashed with lies, false reports, exaggerations, and errors, it has been almost impossible to sit down and give a clear, connected, and true account of what has happened; to jot down from hour to hour all that one hears would only have been to say one moment what must have been unsaid the next. By degrees the facts develope themselves and the fictions are cast aside; but the time is not yet arrived for completing this historical process. There are people alive who remember the whole of the first Revolution, and we of middle age are all familiar with the second; but this, the third, transcends them both, and all other events which history records, in the astonishing political phenomena which it displays. The first Revolution was a long and gradual act, extending over years, in which the mind traces an elaborate concatenation of causes and effects. The second was not unexpected; the causes were working openly and ominously; and at last the great stroke so rashly attempted, and by which the contest was provoked, was only the concluding scene of a drama which for a long preceding time had been in a state of representation before the world. In 1789 everybody saw that a revolution was inevitable; in 1830 everybody thought that it was probable; but in 1848, up to the very moment at which the explosion took place, and even for a considerable time after it (that is, considerable in reference to the period which embraced the whole thing from first to last), no human being dreamt of a revolution and of the dethronement of the King. The power of the Government appeared to be immense and unimpaired. The King was still considered one of the wisest and boldest of men, with a thorough knowledge of the country and the people he ruled; and though his prudence and that of his Ministers had been greatly impugned by their mode of dealing with the question of Parliamentary reform, the worst that anybody anticipated was the fall of Guizot's Cabinet, and that reform of some sort it would be found necessary to concede. But no one imagined that the King, defended by an army of 100,000 men and the fortifications of Paris (which it was always said he had cunningly devised to give himself full power over the capital), was exposed to any personal risk and danger. There was a strong reforming and, it might be, a strong republican or revolutionary spirit abroad, but the principal leaders of Opposition were understood to have no designs against the monarchy, and it was believed by those who had good opportunities of