probably, of his position as a
journalist; add to which, that M. Louis Blanc is not without a species
of off-hand, dashing eloquence. He can say daring things in a daring
manner, and give the pungency of epigram to his political paradoxes. He
has a full share of that rhetoric of journalism which is so well
calculated to make an impression on the careless reader, but which
requires that the reader should continue careless, in order to retain
the impression he has received. It results from all this, that while we
constantly distrust our guide, while we perpetually refuse the
appreciation he offers to us of men and events, we still read on with
interest a work which is, at least, relieved from the charge of
insipidity or dulness; and indeed, if we had not derived some
entertainment from its perusal, we should not have thought of bringing
it under the notice of our readers. To have engaged ourselves merely in
combating its errors and misrepresentations, would have been a dreary
and an endless task.

To enable the reader at once to judge of the tone and temper of M. Louis
Blanc's politics, we present him the following passage. It is the object
of the long Introduction which precedes his history, to show that the
events which have transpired in France since 1793, have had, for their
great result, the establishment of the government of the middle classes
through a Chamber of Deputies--a view which we think is incontestably
right. That France has its House of Commons, is the great fruit of all
its struggles, its calamities, and its victories. It must not be
supposed, however, that this is a result in which M. Louis Blanc
rejoices. Nothing he so much detests as this government of the middle
classes; nor is there any portion of society he vilifies more cordially
than the _bourgeoisie_. Hear how he speaks of them. After relating the
history of the Carbonari, who troubled by their plots the reign of Louis
XVIII., he says:--"This _Carbonarism_ never descended into the depths of
society; it never moved the lower strata. How, then, could it be
preserved from the vices of the middle class--egoism, littleness of
ideas, extreme love of a mere material happiness, gross instincts!"--(P.
115.) So that he finds Carbonarism to have lacked in virtue, because it
had not descended, for its disciples, sufficiently low in the scale of
society!--to have grown corrupt, by reason of its not having penetrated
to the "lower strata!" And yet the duties