the most striking proof of the omniscience of the adorable Saviour. The massive substructions of Solomon offer testimony hardly less valuable and satisfactory, in favor of the authenticity of the Old Testament."

Dr. O. estimates the number of inhabitants in Jerusalem at 15,000. Of these, 5,000 are supposed to be Jews, about 6,000 Mohammedans, and the rest, Christians of various sects, including the tenants of the monasteries. The London Missionary Society have maintained a station here since 1834. "Only five or six Jews have professedly renounced their former opinions, and given evidence of their cordial adhesion to the gospel. They are persons of very low caste, and their conversion has exerted little apparent influence upon their Jewish brethren, except, perhaps, in provoking a greater violence of hostility towards Christianity.” An American mission has also existed for several years at Jerusalem. Besides, a bishop of the English church has recently made a grand entrée into the Holy City, and the foundations of a magnificent cathedral have been laid. But it remains to be seen, whether a spot, in which every influence seems to be arrayed against spiritual religion, where every thing is fitted to exalt the outward of Christianity at the expense of the inward and the true, is the most happily chosen as the theatre of operations for the conversion of the Jews. The homage which is there paid to objects dear to the Christian's heart, and hallowed by innumerable pious associations, constitutes a mighty barrier against the success of the gospel. Outward devotion readily takes the place of a heavenly spirit; and men who pay so much respect to the exterior, will, only with great difficulty, be persuaded that they are deficient in the interior and the real. Superstition and prejudice are easily fostered in the minds of the ignorant multitudes who throng to holy places. While they imagine that a visit to consecrated spots, an 'ave Maria' repeated before an altar of peculiar sanctity, the touch of objects made sacred by some scene described in the New Testament, or by the presence of some revered person, is sufficient to cleanse the soul from sin, and recommend the sinner to the favor of God, they will be slow to cast away all claim to merit by such performances. They will not hasten to accept a religion which abases man, and hides his works behind the merits of Jesus Christ. It would seem most appropriate, that the standard of the cross should be reared again on the heights of

Zion; and that the power of truth, in the hands of the Spirit, should go out from the Holy City to regenerate the earth. But what God has purposed in this respect, time only can reveal.

In taking our leave of these volumes, we must not fail to express our approbation of the fine steel engravings which adorn the work; and especially of the beautiful plan of Jerusalem, by Mr. Catherwood, probably the most perfect that has ever been published. The volumes are an excellent contribution to our American literature, and will be useful addition to the collection of the general reader and the Biblical critic. EDITOR.

ARTICLE V.

ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE.

History of Europe, from the commencement of the French Revolution to the Restoration of the Bourbons, in 1815. By ARCHIBALD ALISON. American edition. Harpers.

New York. 1843.

WE have followed Mr. Alison in the magnificent march of his history, with interest unabated, even to the close. It addresses the imagination with all the fascinating interest of fiction, while it instructs and exalts the understanding with the accuracy, the dignity and the wisdom of history. Among the great historical works which our language contains, it would be presumptuous to assign the place destined to be held by one that has yet been completed scarcely for a single year. Yet we are free to admit, that, of them all, none seems to us so filled with thrilling incidents or eloquent descriptions; none opens to our view scenes so extraordinary and sublime, or records events so pregnant with lessons for every subsequent age.

The selection of the subject was fortunate in the highest degree. The immense range of topics comprised in the history of Europe, during the period to which our author confines his attention, allows him the widest latitude in the narration, and furnishes ample materials for the most vivid.

and varied descriptions. From France, the mighty centre of the convulsions he describes, he conducts the reader abroad, to every part of the civilized world; for, sooner or later, every part of the civilized world is shaken by the shock of the French revolution. Now we are gazing on the frightful scenes of the revolution, or standing amidst the magnificent structures which the genius of Napoleon was rearing, in every part of the empire, to perpetuate the glory of his reign; and now, in the heart of Europe, we follow the victorious march of those stupendous armies with which he sought to enslave the world. At one time we are among the crumbling monuments of Egypt, tracking the conqueror through the Syrian desert, to the bloody siege of Acre, and the terrible slaughter at Jaffa. At another, we are on the road to Moscow, in the midst of 600,000 warriors, destined to perish amidst the snows of Russia, or to waste away beneath the untold calamities of that disastrous campaign. Among the mountain glories of Spain, along the storied passes of Italy, or far away over the luxuriant plains of Hindostan, we follow the narrative of the author, every where instructed by his knowledge, delighted with his eloquence, and filled with wonder at the astonishing tragedy in human affairs, which he causes to pass before us.

As we advance in the progress of the wonderful drama, we gradually lose sight of the principles and causes of the revolution. Its authors, one after another, have fallen victims to the ferocious spirit they had recklessly conjured up from the lowest depths of society, and from the vilest passions of the human heart. Theory after theory of the rights of man had been put to the test of experiment, and had not only failed, but had brought its author to the guillotine; and, instead of the harvest of happiness and freedom, which France had thought to reap from the seeds sown in the revolution, she had garnered up only the terrible treasures of wretchedness, degradation and death. Through all this wreck of society, however, the stream of history at length flows out into the uninterrupted channel made for it by the achievements of one man, whose transcendent greatness is sufficiently attested by the fact, that, for ten years, the history of Europe is but the record of his single life and actions, and their mighty and far-spreading results.

The career of Napoleon was a natural and almost necessary consequence of the anarchy and confusion of such an event

as the French revolution. The passions of the nation had burned out, and there remained no more fuel to feed their flame. The throne of the Bourbons had been demolished, and the whole power of the state had been transferred from a line of hereditary kings, to a legislative body, elected by the suffrages of the whole people of France. The humblest peasant and the most wretched sans culotte had now obtained a voice in the government of the republic. The patriotism of the nation had been roused, and its energies directed into the channel of military ambition, by the feeble and ineffectual invasion of the allies, in 1792-3. Constitution after constitution had been set up; but each in succession had been swept away by the tempest of the revolution. Experiment. on experiment had been made, in order to devise some method of reconciling the well-being and good order of the state with the insatiable cravings of its restless and idle populace; who, especially in the larger towns, seemed to thirst almost equally for power and for blood. But all had signally failed. The finances of the nation were in ruins. Its resources were exhausted. Its credit was gone. The estates of the king and the nobility, of the clergy and the church, had all been confiscated. The populace were starving in the streets, and clamorously demanding bread from the public granaries; while the citizens of the higher classes, even those who at first had favored the revolution,-their hopes disappointed, their property gone, their counsels disregarded, and their interests trampled under foot,-were sighing in secret for stability and order, and were ready to favor any government which could guarantee to them quiet and security. Never, in modern times at least, has a nation presented so melancholy a picture of universal distrust and confusion, of anarchy, and bankruptcy, and starvation; of furious passions, and open vices, and blasphemous atheism, as was then witnessed over all that once smiling land. The state seemed like one suffering from the feverish lassitude of a long debauch,—in which every crime had been perpetrated, and all the foul and polluting passions of human nature had held their disgusting orgies unrebuked.

To such a condition had the affairs of the nation been reduced, when Napoleon returns to France at the close of his brilliant campaign in Egypt,—a campaign in which he had carried the arms of the republic into regions hitherto

untraversed, and against foes before unknown in the warfares of modern Europe. The directory was at this time struggling to maintain its doubtful authority amidst the factions and tumults by which it was surrounded. The utter worthlessness of the government, and its insufficiency for the exigencies of the time, were obvious to the eagle eye of Napoleon at a single glance; and, amidst the enthusiastic greetings which every where await his return, he conceives the idea of seizing the reins of power, and placing himself at the head of the government. The voice of the people summoned him to take this step. The legislative bodies and a portion of the higher officers of the army, jealous of the rising fortunes of their general, were alone opposed or indifferent to his plans. To overcome this opposition, and so to manage the great councils of the republic as to be able to conceal his acts of usurpation beneath the forms of law, required all the sagacity and profound knowledge of human nature, which in Napoleon seem to have been almost intuitive. But his intrigues, though managed by a multitude of agents, and approaching more than once to the very verge of failure, were at length successful; and the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, the 9th of November, 1799,-placed him upon the consular throne. This event was welcomed with every demonstration of joy by the immense masses of the Parisians, and was hailed with unusual satisfaction by the whole people of France. The new constitution, which ratified the consulship, was put out to the suffrages of the people, and, notwithstanding its entire extinction of all popular rule, the glittering prize which had been the aim of ten years of incessant agitation and experiment,—it was approved by an immense majority of the voters, and went into operation amidst the universal rejoicings of all classes of the people. The votes for its adoption,-strange to relate,were 3,011,007, while those for the constitution of 1793 were only 1,801,918; and for that of 1795, which established the directory, the best and most energetic form the republic had ever assumed, were 1,057,390. The astonishing difference between these respective votes, and the singular superiority of that which surrendered the state to the power of Napoleon, is instructive in the highest degree. The fact is worthy to be held in perpetual remembrance. The nation had waded through rivers of blood, and for ten dreary years