An eminent diplomatist of France has just published two volumes of most interesting revelations drawn from his own note-books and personal knowledge. We allude to the _Etudes Diplomatiques et Litteraires_ of Count Alexis de Saint Priest. On the partition of Poland especially, it casts an entirely new and conclusive light. M. Saint Priest shows that apart from the internal anarchy and weakness of Poland, the catastrophe was the work not of Russia as has been commonly supposed, but of Frederic the Great of Prussia. Russia had no interest in dividing Poland; in fact she was already supreme in that country; and besides, her policy has never been that of an active initiative,--she waits for the fruit to fall, and does not take the trouble of shaking the tree herself. The great criminal then in this Polish affair was Prussia, and the cause was the historic antagonism between Germany and Poland. M. Saint Priest sketches the character of Frederic with the hand of a master. "We shall see him," he says in approaching that part of his subject, "we shall see him as he was, both adventurous and patient, ardent and calm, full of passion yet perfectly self-possessed, capable of embracing the vastest horizon and of shutting himself up for the moment in the most limited detail, his eyes reaching to the farthest distance, his hand active in the nearest vicinity, approaching his aim step by step through by-paths, but always gaining it at last by a single bound. We shall see him employing the most indefatigable, the most tenacious, the most persevering will in the service of his idea, preparing it, maturing it by long and skillful reparation, and imposing it on Europe not by sudden violence, but by the successive and cunning employment of flattery and intimidation. And finally, when all is consummated, we shall see him succeed in avoiding the responsibility and throwing it altogether upon his coadjutors, with an art all the more profound for the simplicity under which its hardihood was concealed, and the indifference which masked its avidity. To crown so audacious a maneuver, he will not hesitate to declare, that "since he has never deceived any one, he will still less deceive posterity! And in fact he has treated them with a perfect equality: he made a mock of posterity as well as of his contemporaries." With regard to the part of France in the division of Poland, M. Saint Priest attempts to prove that the French monarchy could not prevent the catastrophe; but that it was in the revolutionary elements then fermenting in France and opposed to the monarchy, that Frederic found his most powerful allies. Of course he defends the monarchy from blame in the matter, and we shall not undertake to say that he is wrong in so doing. Certainly the downfall of Poland cannot be regarded as an isolated event, but as a part of the great series of movements belonging to the age, in which causes the most antagonistic in their nature often cooperated in producing the same effect.