The Revolution of 1848. By Imbert de Saint-Amand. Trans- lated
by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. (Hutchinson and Co.)-11f. de Saint-Amand tel!s in detail the story of Louis Philippe's fall, and a strange story it is ! That the" Ulysses" of the nineteenth century—to use the identification of the New Tinton—should have been so strangely deceived is marvellous. To the last he believed that all was going well. Another curious thing is the fatuity of those —Odillon Barrot, for example—who set the avalanche moving, without the least conception of what they did. "M. Odillon Barrot," wrote M. Maxima du Camp, "in opening the cave of Eolus to find the Zephyr which might waft his bark into the ministerial haven, had unchained the tempest!' And then the really overpowering forces in the hands of Government were wasted with a fatuity that is almost incon- ceivable. Thiers, indeed, was ready with a proposition which, had it been accepted, would have saved the Monarchy, at least for the time. He, in fact, wanted to do in 1818 what he afterwards, did in 1871. He proposed a retreat to St. Cloud as in 1871 he proposed migration to Versailles. From St. Cloud, as afterwards from Versailles, he could act without hindrance. It is remarkable how the blunders of 1830, the very things by which Louis Philippe had profited, were repeated by him in 1848.
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