The Sun. — 1849-06-07 (London, England)

LITERATURE.  ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE. Illus  trated Edition. Vol.  Another volume of the library edition of " Alison," embellished with portraits, has just afforded us additional reason for congratulating the subscribers to the present edition—the very best, without any question, that has yet been published. We should venture to say the best that will be published, hut that the historian and his publishers afford us no room for prediction in this particular. Edition has followed edition, evincing at once the eminent success of Mr. Alison and the enterprise of the Messrs. Blackwood —but so surely as edition followed edition so surely did the latest surpass its predecessors. 'When a very few months back the history appeared in twenty volumes of a smaller size, and in every respect adapted to the bookshelves of the middle classes, it appeared that the work had at length reached the limits of its popularity yet awhile as far as purchasers were concerned. But no ; the compactor edition is scarcely completed when one more ornate, arid, in every respect, more costly follows— adorned with accurate likenesses of the many wonderful personages whose genius and vicissitudes are associated to the narrative, and accompanied by a re-issue of the invaluable atlas produced under the direction of Mr. A. K. Johnston. The third volume, appearing simultaneously with the magazines for June, contains the portraits of Edmund Burke and of Maximilian Robespierre—the former copied from the celebrated painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the latter taken from a very curious original picture (a sketch from which we never recollect to have seen  before) now in the possession of Mr. J. B. Jarman. The likeness of Burke we never could fancy to have done justice to that extraordinary man, who must have betrayed more of the fire of that great intellect which burnt so brightly in his orations and in his writings. Inasmuch, however, as he has given a faithful transcript from the painting of Sir Joshua, Mr. W. H. Egleton, the engraver, has been successful. Of the two engravings we, nevertheless, greatly prefer the one of Robespierre—giving as it does the most agreeable portraiture of that terrible demagogue which we can call to our remembrance. Even the sinister reputation of the Terrorist cannot deprive the countenance of charm (a ghastly charm, enough, we grant it) which is inseparable from great weakness, a weakness capable of being bent to good or evil, accordingly as passion or circumstances might dictate, accompanied by great decision towards the carrying out of principles. That moral weakness and intellectual decision are variously expressed in the contour of the nose and in the compression of the mouth. Lavater, reading the history of the great revolution, would have accepted this as a correct effigy of the man who wrote so eloquently in his youth against capital punishment, and who yet in his riper manhood, for the sake, as he fancied, of realising the utopian philosophy of Rousseau, organized the despotism of the guillotine. The face is the face of a man who could be madman and fanatic enough to conceive the possibility of perfecting humanity according to the precepts of the evangel by a cruelty not merely inhuman, but absolutely diabolical. Every time the reign of Robespierre is brought afresh to cur recollection, we begin to marvel as to what might have happened supposing Marat had survived the dagger-wound of the Angel of Assassination. Remembering how every one of the leaders of the revolution fell before the ruthless egotism and resolve of Maximilian, how the axe descended upon the necks of Gensonne, Barbaroux, Vergniaud, and the rest of the Girondists, upon Anacharsis Clootz, on Hebert and the rest of Anarchists, upon Danton, Desmoulins, Poilipeaux and their companions, one is disposed to marvel who would have been the victor had Marat and Robespierre confronted each other at last in the death struggle. 'Whether the man of will or the man of audacity? The hand of Charlotte Corday has left that possible struggle to our conjectures. One murder has, perchance, prevented a more awful and wholesale bloodshed than even that which preceded the ninth of Thermidor. Who shall say ? At least such thoughts are provoked by the scrutiny of this novel and most characteristic portrait of Robespierre. The third volume of this handsome edition for the library recounts the events which transpired between 1793 and 1795 inclusively. And the third part of the illustrative atlas, contains plans ranging inclusively from the battle of Rivoli to the battle of Stockach. Henceforth the atlas by John ston must prove an inseparable accompaniment to the history by Alison.