We are to-day well able to judge the period described in these Recollections, a period which seems still further removed from us by the revolutions, the wars, and even the misfortunes which the country has since undergone, and which now only appears to us in that subdued light which throws the principal outlines into especial relief, while permitting the more observant and penetrating eye to discover also the secondary features. Living close enough to those times to receive evidence from the lips of survivors, and not so close but that all passion has become appeased and all rancour extinguished, we should be in a position to lack neither light nor impartiality. As witness, for instance, the impression retained by us of the figure of Ledru-Rollin, which nevertheless terrified our fathers. We live in a generation which has beheld Raoul, Rigault and Delescluze at work. The theories of Louis Blanc and Considerant arouse no feeling of astonishment in these days, when their ideas have become current coin, and when the majority of politicians feel called upon to adopt the badge of some socialism or other, whether we call it Christian, State, or revolutionary socialism. Cormenin, Marrast and Lamartine belong to history as much as do Sieyes, Petion or Mirabeau; and we are able to judge as freely of the men and the events of 1848 as of those of 1830 or 1789. Alexis de Tocqueville had the rare merit of being able to forestall this verdict of posterity; and if we endeavour to discover the secret of this prescience, of the loftiness of sight with which he was so specially gifted, we shall find that, belonging to no party, he remained above all parties; that, depending upon no leader, he kept his hands free; and that, possessed of no vulgar ambition, he reserved his energies for the noble aim which he had in view--the triumph of liberty and of the dignity of man. Interest will doubtless be taken in the account contained in these Recollections of the revolutionary period, written by one of the best-informed of its witnesses, and in the ebbs and flows of the short-lived ministry which was conducted with so much talent and integrity. But what will be especially welcome is the broad views taken by this great mind of our collective history; his profound reflections upon the future of the country and of society; the firm and conscientious opinions which he expresses upon his contemporaries; and the portraits drawn by a master hand, always striking and always alive. When reading this private record, which has been neither revised nor corrected by its author, we seem to approach more closely to the sentiments, the desires, the aspirations, I was almost saying the dreams of this rare mind, this great heart so ardently pursuing the chimera of absolute good that nothing in men or institutions could succeed in satisfying it.