making a very interesting narrative. Though possessed, as the extracts
we shall give will abundantly testify, of considerable power of
description, and rising at times into strains of touching eloquence, it
is not his object to render his work attractive in either of these ways.
Had it been so, he would have chosen a different subject; he would have
selected the glories of Louis XIV. which preceded the disasters of the
Revolution; the glories of the empire, which followed it. His turn of
mind is not dramatic; he is neither poetic in his imagination, nor
pictorial in his description. Considering the close connexion between
these arts and history, these are very great deficiencies, and must ever
prevent his work from taking its place beside the masterpieces in this
department of literature. It will not bear a comparison with the
dramatic story of Livy, the caustic nerve of Sallust, the profound
observation of Tacitus, or the pictorial page of Gibbon. But, regarded
as a picture of the moral causes working in society, anterior to a great
and memorable convulsion, it is entitled to the highest praise, and will
ever be viewed as a most valuable _preliminary volume_ to the most
important period of European history.

M. de Tocqueville possesses one most important quality, in addition to
his calm judgment and discriminating sagacity. His moral and religious
principles are not only unexceptionable, but they are founded on the
soundest and most enlightened basis. Humane without being
sentimental--moral but not uncharitable--religious but not fanatical--he
surveys society, its actors and its crimes, with the eve of enlightened
philanthropy, experienced reason, and Christian charity. He is neither a
fierce, imperious Romish bigot like Bossuet, nor a relentless
Calvinistic theologian like D'Aubigne, nor a scoffing infidel like
Voltaire. Deeply impressed with the vital importance of religion to the
temporal and eternal welfare of mankind, he is yet enlightened enough to
see that all systems of religious belief have much to recommend them,
and rejects the monstrous doctrine that salvation can be obtained only
by the members of any particular sect. He sees much good in all
religions; much evil in many of their supporters. He is a Roman
Catholic; but he is the first to condemn the frightful injustice of the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes; he does not doom the whole members of
the Church of England to damnation, as so many of our zealo