WE were, we believe, amongst the first to hail the appearance of Mr. Alison's very instructive and interesting volumes, and we now offer him our sincere and cordial congratulation upon their close. He has completed a very full and graphical history of Europe, during a period replete with interest, and abounding in events of absorbing magnitude; and he brought to his task a candid, an elevated, and an inquiring mind, and a laborious and persevering diligence and research, which have enabled him to present to the English reader, for the first time, in a continuous form, the multifarious transactions which he has undertaken to elucidate, so as to preclude the necessity of referring to any other work for such knowledge on the subject as may satisfy the general reader.

The tyro in history may now study, with an undivided mind, all the consequences of that mystery of iniquitythe French revolution. He may discern its origin in the superstition by which the pure simplicity of the Gospel was obscured; he may trace its growth in the infidelity which such superstition is sure to engender, when the religious system of any country falls below the requirements of the age; he may witness its progress in the development of those passions and propensities which are sure to manifest themselves in corrupt human nature when the restraints of religion are removed, and in that violent re-action against tyrannical establishments which ended in the overthrow of social order, until society became convulsed, humanity demonized, and a whole nation infected with an epidemic phrenzy, which rendered them a curse to themselves, and a scourge and an astonishment to the world.

The reflecting student may also learn, if he duly ponder the pages of this enlightened man, that, amidst all the disorders incident to revolution,

Το

and the temporary triumph of impiety and wickedness," verily there is a God that judgeth the earth." this point Mr. Alison always has a special reference; and we deem it impossible that many of the details which on former occasions we deemed it right to bring before our readers, when noticing his earlier volumes, can be attentively considered by any competent judge, without impressing the conviction of an overruling Providence. In this tenth and last volume, the great historical drama is brought to a close. The great man who so long "rode the whirlwind and directed the storm" of the revolution, and whose genius and whose energy was such that he seemed to have subdued the monster who had destroyed all others, and subordinated him to his own will and pleasure, is himself the victim of that vaulting ambition which had stimulated his rise, and finds that in the deeds of darkness and of blood, by the perpetration of which he had hoped to grasp universal empire, was engendered that avenging wrath by which he was stripped of his dominions, and steeped to the lips in humiliation.

Yes; Buonaparte was the concentrated essence of the French revolution. In him was exemplified all the terrific energy of that dreadful explosion, with a vigour of intellect, and an unity of purpose by which it was controlled and directed. The lightnings which played around his head he collected, by means of his conductors, and converted into an artillery, by which, for a season, he was enabled to spread confusion amongst his enemies. He thus, for a time, appeared to be a god. All nations, with one glorious exception, at one time or another, bowed down and worshipped him. And this was the cause why he was so holden with pride, and so surcharged with cruelty,

that he deemed no let or impediment could be placed to his dominion from the sea unto the world's end. "I would have your master to know," was his language to the ambassador from the Emperor of Russia, "that I propose, and I dispose." And oh, how signally was the impiety avenged! The conflagration of Moscow and the snows of Russia, were the answer to the profane and wicked boast; and the debris of the most splendid armament that Europe ever saw, in rout, and confusion, and despair, through the countries which they had so recently traversed with a conqueror's tread, was but the precursor to that tissue of calamities, which thenceforth, in unin terrupted sequence, attended the French arms, until the potentate who would fain wrest the bolt from Omnipotence, was precipitated to his doom, and became as memorable for the reverses which he sustained, as he had ever previously been for the brilliant successes which conducted to his exaltation.

It is, in truth, in the vindication of the ways of God to man, by pointing out the retributive justice which sooner or later overtakes long triumphant wickedness, that the value of Mr. Alison's volumes chiefly consist. He has studied his subject with the mind of a man deeply imbued with this truth, that "verily there is a God that judgeth the earth;" and he seldom fails to trace to a departure from moral or religious principle, the heaviest of those calamities to which the nations of Europe were subjected, during the tyrannous ascendancy of the principle of the revolution.

The reader who has traced even our brief and necessarily meagre analysis of the preceding volumes, will have seen how inevitably the first outbreak of the revolution proceeded from the abuses engendered by tyranny and superstition. He will have seen how furiously oppressed humanity at length vindicates itself, and how terribly its oppressions are avenged. As he proceeds, he will see the demonizing effects of unbalanced democratic power upon the multitude, when either godless or unenlightened. He will see the fury with which the different factions assail each other, after they have, by their united efforts, completed the estruction of the privileged orders.

He will thus see society resolved into its original elements, and an anarchy of evil passions, in which confusion itself is worse confounded, taking the place of the government that had been overthrown, until France ran with the blood of its most virtuous citizens; and, resolving itself into a nation of atheists, firebrands, and assassins, affronted the eye of heaven by impieties too shocking to be described, and disturbed the peace of surrounding nations by a propagandism too monstrous to be tolerated, until indignant Europe was roused to arms, and every civilized country felt itself concerned in arresting a course of things which must, if unresisted, have led to universal disorder. He will then see the desperate and convulsive struggle of the regicide power to make head against the hostility which has been provoked by her misdeeds, until, sinking under the exhaustion of her own efforts, she succumbs under the domination of the military chief, who curbed her factions, retrieved her fortunes, and led her armies to victory. A tyranny was now established, a splendid, gorgeous, military tyranny, in which Buonaparte made his little finger feel more heavy, than the feebleminded Louis had ever made his whole loins, and by which, the madness and wickedness of revolution was well avenged. Nor does the retributive justice of heaven appear only in the oppressions and calamities which a guilty nation brought upon itself by its misdeeds. It is clearly discernible also in the dealings of God with the surrounding nations, whose reverses, during the ascendancy of Buonaparte, are all distinctly traceable either to defects in their government, or a want of principle in their councils, by which they might have well provoked the Almighty Ruler's high displeasure. It is impossible to behold the great con tinental monarchies so repeatedly prostrated before the terrific energy of France, and steeped to the lips in misery and humiliation, without thinking of the partition of Poland, and considering that it was when their own hands were still reeking with the blood of an unoffending nation, which, in their profligate ambition they had torn asunder, they were compelled to feel that galling tyranny by which the iron was made to enter into their

souls. But long enough had the great oppressor been suffered to prevail as the scourge of God. His own iniquities, and those of the nation whom he punished while he governed, loudly challenged divine vengeance. And, though long delayed, at last it came; and the interest and the value of the volume before us chiefly consists in the vivid detail of those circumstances which led to a more cordial and better principled combination of the European powers against the great oppressor, and the struggles of that extraordinary man against the tide of destiny which now rushed upon him with an overwhelming flood, but which he boldly breasted to the last; and when he was eventually overborne by it, a single man against an embattled world, still left him "not less than archangel ruined."

The following is the historian's description of the deplorable state of the French army after the disastrous campaign of 1813.

"On returning to Paris, Napoleon had inserted a statement in the Moniteur, that the re-organization of the army was rapidly advancing; that the marshals had received reinforcements to enable them to maintain impregnable the barrier of the Rhine; that the artillery had repaired its losses; the National Guards were crowding into its fortresses; and that all the efforts of the allies would be shattered against that bulwark of art and nature. But in the midst of all this seeming confidence, the real state of the army on the frontier was very different; and disaster, wide-spread and unparalleled, had overtaken the shattered remains of the host which had wended its way back from the Elbe. Though the country through which that retreat had been conducted was rich and cultivated, the season temperate, and the marches not in general of unusual length; yet the deplorable effects of Napoleon's system of carrying on war without magazines, or provision of any kind for a retreat, had reduced the troops to the most woeful state of destitution. The first corps which passed along the road consumed every thing on its line, and within reach of the stragglers on either side, to the distance of several miles; and those which came after, as on the Moscow retreat, could find nothing whatever whereon to subsist. Magazines there were none between the Elbe and the Rhine, a distance of above two hundred miles, except at Erfurth; and the supplies there only maintained the troops

66

The

Nothing could exceed the astonishment of the inhabitants of the left bank of the Rhine, who had hitherto known war only by its excitement and its glories, when they beheld this woeful crowd, refluent by the bridge of Mayence into the French territory, and spreading like a flood over the whole country. But their number was so considerable that even the zeal and charity of the inhabitants, which were taxed to the utmost, were unable to provide any effectual remedy for their distresses. In the fortified towns, where the great mass of the fugitives, armed and unarmed, found a refuge, their situation though at first superior was ere long still more deplorable. The dreadful typhus fever which they brought with them from the scenes of their suffering in the German plains, soon spread to such a degree among the exhausted crowds who sought shelter within their walls, that in a few days not only the greater part of the military, but a large proportion of the citizens, were prostrate on the bed of sickness. churches, the hospitals, the halls of justice, the private houses, were soon filled with a ghastly and dying multitude, among whom the worst species of fever spread its ravages, and dysentery wore down extenuated forms to the lowest stage of weakness. Such was the mortality, that for several weeks at Mayence it reached five hundred a-day. The exhalations arising from so great a multitude of dead bodies, which all the efforts of the inhabitants could not succeed in burying, were such, that they ere long poisoned the atmosphere, and spread an insupportable and pestilential odour through the whole city. The churchyards and ordinary places of sepulture being soon overcharged, and interment in coffins out of the question, from the multitude of dead bodies which abounded on all sides, they were thrown promiscuously into vast trenches dug in the public cemeteries, which were rapidly heaped up to a height exceeding that of the walls which enclosed them; and, when this resource failed, they were con signed to the Rhine, the stream of which wafted them down, as from a vast field of carnage, to the German Ocean; while

the shores of the Baltic were polluted by the corpses, which, borne by the waters of the Elbe, the Oder, and the Vistula, from the vast charnel-houses which the fortresses on their banks had become, bespoke the last remains and final punishment of the external government of the revolution."

But France was now to have the bitter chalice commended to her own lips, which she had so long made other nations drain to the dregs. The sacred territory was on all sides invadedWellington, in the south, with hostile banners displayed, came down from the Pyrenees upon the fertile plains of the Garonne, while the united armies of Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden extended their mighty masses towards the north and east, enclosing, by the progressive development of their resources, their formidable antagonist in a circle of fire. Never, surely, since the world began, was such involuntary homage done to the genius and the valour of a single man! The allies made war, not upon a nation, but upon an individual. Their hostility was directed, not against France, but Napoleon Buonaparte. He had made her what she was-a terror to the nations; and it was now clear to almost all the allies, and loudly asserted by the emperor of Russia, who took the lead in the coalition, that by his deposition alone could she become what she ought to be; so that her existence as an independent state might be compatible with the security of the rest of Europe. Only Austria demurred. That power, from the very commencement of the contest had looked with a greedy eye to national advantages at the expense of the common cause, and was indebted for some of its most serious reverses to the selfish councils which postponed general to personal objects. And now, when her son-inlaw was driven to his last resource, great was the reluctance which was evinced by the emperor to compel him to lay down the imperial sceptre, and wily were the expedients of Prince Metternich to procure for him such terms as might still leave him upon the throne. In vain were the reclamations of the Prussian and Russian sovereigns thundered in the dull ears which would not hear them. In vain were the most tempting opportunities of advancing upon the French capital

opened to the allies by their victorious arms. Austria was sluggish in her movements to a degree that baulked the ardent spirit and defeated the energetic combinations of the other powers; and were it not for the des perate imprudence of Napoleon, who was deceived by some temporary gleams of success into the belief that his star was about to be again ascendant, the bold advance would never have been made which brought to its appropriate close the eventful drama of the revolution.

We can afford to give our readers but a very few extracts, in which Mr. Alison depicts with much vigour the contest which was now going on, and the prodigious energy of the French emperor, who, overmatched though he was, still boldly kept the field against the most overwhelming odds, and whose military genius never shone forth with brighter lustre than just then when it was about to be extinguished for

ever.

The following is the description our historian gives of the combat at Laon, where for the first time the whole disposable forces of Napoleon, under his own personal direction, were brought to a stand:

"It was a sublime and yet animating spectacle, when, on the evening of the 8th March, the allied army withdrew on all sides into the vicinity of this ancient and celebrated city. To the anxious and trembling crowds of citi zens, and peasants driven in from the adjacent country, which had been the theatre of hostilities, the horizon to the south and west appeared covered by innumerable fires; loud discharges of cannon rolled on all sides, and sensibly approached the town; long lines of light, proceeding from the fire of the infantry of the allies as they retired, or the French as they advanced, were distinctly seen as the shades of evening set in. When night approached, and darkness overspread the plain, a still more extraordinary spectacle presented itself; the continued fire in the midst of the thickets and woods with which the country abounded, produced a strange optical delusion, which converted the trees into so many electrical tubes, from the summits of which sparks and dazzling light, as from so many fireworks, appeared to rush upwards into the heavens. In the midst of this lurid illumination, long lines of infantry dark masses of cavalry, and endles