ART. IX.-BOTANY AND SCOTTISH BOTANISTS, The British Flora; comprising the Phonogamous or Flowering Plants, and the Ferns. London. 1855. Class-Book of Botany; being an Introduction to the Study of the Vegetable Kingdom. Edinburgh. 1852. Outlines of Botany. Edinburgh. 1854. Botany and Religion; or, Illustrations of the Works of God in the Structure, Functions, Arrangement, and General Distribution of Plants. Edinburgh. 1859. Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 1841-58. ART. X.-ELISABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA, Memoirs of Elisabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, Daughter of King James I. London. 1825. Lives of the Princesses of England, from the Norman Con- Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses, connected with the Regal Succession of Great Britain. Friedrich V., Churfürst von der Pfalz und König von Böhmen. Eine historisch-biographische Schilderung Elisabeth Stuart, Gemahlin Friederich's V., von der Pfalz. Geschichte Kaiser Ferdinands II. u. seiner Eltern, etc. ART. XI.-NAPOLEONISM AND ITALY, L'Empereur Napoleon et l'Italie. Paris. 1859. Confidential Correspondence of Napoleon Bonaparte with his Brother Joseph. London. 1855. Correspondence on the Affairs of Italy, presented to both La Question Romaine par E. About. Bruxelles. 1859. Correspondence respecting the Affairs of Italy. 1859. ART. XII.-RECENT PUBLICATIONS,. 1. Dr Buchanan's Clerical Furlough. 2. Man and his Dwelling-Place. 3. Paley's Moral Philosophy-Whately. ART. I.-STATE PAPERS-MEMORIALS OF HENRY VII., Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages. Published by the authority of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. Memorials of King Henry VII. Hwomely Rhymes. A Second Collection of Poems in the Dorset Dialect. By William Barnes. London, 1859. The Burns Centenary Poems. A Collection of Fifty of the Best out of many Hundreds written on occasion of the Centenary Celebration. Selected and Edited by George The Order of Nature considered in reference to the Claims ART. VI. STUDENTS OF "THE NEW LEARNING," Autobiography and Diary of Mr James Melville, Minister China; in H.M.S. "Barracouta." By J. M. Tronson, R.N. With Charts and Views. London, 1859. A Cruise in Japanese Waters. By Captain Osborn, R.N. Notes on Japan. By Laurence Oliphant, F.R.G.S. (Read A List of the Books of Reference in the Reading-room of New Exegesis of Shakespeare: Interpretation of his Prin- The Report of the Evidence and other Proceedings in Par- liament respecting the Invention of the Life-Boat. By Henry Greathead, of South Shields. London, 1804. Shipwreck Investigated. By Henry Trengrouse, Helston. An Essay on the Preservation of Shipwrecked Persons. By Captain Manby. London, 1812. On the Nature of Thunderstorms, and on the Means of Protecting Buildings and Shipping against the Destruc- tive Effects of Lightning. By Sir W. Snow Harris, Treatise on Burning Instruments, containing the Method of Building large Polyzonal Lenses, and an Apparatus for Increasing the Intensity and the Size of the Refracted Beams. By David Brewster, LL.D., F.R.S. In the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, vol. v., p. 140, 143. Edin- burgh, 1812. (And other Works.) ART. XI. THE ITALIAN QUESTION, Papers on the Italian Question, 1858-59. ART. XII.-RECENT PUBLICATIONS, THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW. AUGUST, 1859. ART. I.-Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de mon Temps. Par M. GUIZOT. Vol. II. Paris: M. Lévy. any THERE is always something to be learnt in accurately discovering the how, the why, the wherefore of certain historical events. Peoples, in our day, have taken the place of persons; and if it might still be an error to "nation" did this or that, that say it is certainly none to ascribe to the collective action of large popular bodies or masses, what, in the history of some two or three hundred years ago, would have been attributable solely to the initiative of such or such an individual. No one has any right now-a-days to disdain the acts of the many, and contemporary history may well be styled the Chronicle of the Crowd. It is important for us in these islands to know, as correctly as we can, the contemporary history of France, and, above all, the origin of facts that have occurred within the last forty years. About nothing do we know less; and our ignorance comes fully as much from a certain self-willed spirit of our own as from any lack of trustworthy documents to guide us. It is all very well to say to those who seek for information, "See with your own eyes. But we have not so much watched the various acts of the revolutionary drama in France with "our own eyes," as we have persisted in doing so by the aid of British spectacles. We have invariably applied the most absurdly, exclusively John Bullish criterions to things, to judge which impartially it is indispensable that we should lay aside every vestige of national prejudice that may be lurking about us. We have done this more towards those with whom it accorded least, than we have towards any others we have now and then shown ourselves capable of judging Greeks, Turks, Spaniards, Mexicans, or Caffres from their point of view; we never see our neighbours on the other side of the Channel as they really are. VOL. XXXI. NO. LXI. A Not a few of our mistakes, and certainly the greater portion of our deceptions, have arisen from our remarkable misapprehension of almost everything connected with the Revolution of July 1830. We were wrong in nearly all our appreciations of that event: undervaluing what was overthrown, over-estimating that which overthrew it, and ignoring at once the character of the chief actors in the drama, the manner in which they acted, and the exterior circumstances whereby they were acted upon. If we had known better what the Revolution of 1830 really was— what it did, and what it left undone upon what bases it reposed, and what dangers threatened it, we should not have been taken unprepared by the insurrection of February 1848; nor should we, perhaps, have been so exceedingly surprised at the behaviour of Louis Philippe in '48, if we had had clearly presented to our minds what he went through in '31 and '32. We knew Louis Philippe no better than we knew the intimate characteristics of the movement that placed him on the throne; and it was very difficult for us to know either, seeing that we persisted in judging both, not from their point of view, but from our own. Britain put more than the usual amount of British pride, and British indifference to an accurate knowledge of what occurs in foreign countries, into the task of appreciating the sudden change of government in France in the year 1830; and instead of even attempting to be minutely well informed as to what had taken place amongst our neighbours, we preferred believing that they had imitated us, and that the July Revolution was a copy of the act by which Great Britain, after deposing the Stuarts, and crushing Absolutist tendencies in the person of James II., yet respected tradition and upheld the monarchical principle by calling James' daughter to the throne, conjointly with her Dutch consort. This was the quickest, easiest mode of making ourselves familiar with what had happened in France; it saved trouble, and was pleasant to us; and we chose to adopt it without ever caring to examine the differences that existed between the two revolutions. The superficial resemblances satisfied us. A king had been beheaded in either case; his heirs had in either case been restored to the throne; his descendants were again thrown down from their high estate by the uprising of the country, whose liberal tendencies they resisted; and, to complete the parallel, whilst the Stuarts went to the court of the Bourbons, and lived in state at St Germain, the Bourbons came over to the British shores, and took refuge at Holyrood. Nothing could seem more similar, yet never was anything less like. With that we appeared to have nothing to do. It mattered not to us that, whereas throughout our revolutionary movement the great Whig |