The following is a forcible article from a French paper called Le Siecle, on the existing state of things in the Gentile Heavenlies. It sees further into the millstone than the rest of its contemporaries. It is guarded in its remarks about Austria, expressing rather what Europe might hope, than what is certain to be. An Austrian sentinel at the gates of Europe, in the presence of Gog, is no very trusty guarantee for those who would not wake up in the morning the tenants of a jail.

EDITOR.

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"To talk of the abdication of the Emperor Nicholas, when neither Sebastopol nor Cronstadt has been taken, and when he has still his fleets and his frontiers intact, is certainly a piece of sterile puerility. The semi-official character of the journal which has held this language may even render it dangerous, inasmuch as, being regarded as an echo of the ideas of the French Government, it will encourage him to whom it is addressed to a personal and desperate resistance. The powers who have teeth and claws even in the fable, are not willingly present at the sale of the spoils which have been taken from them. It is not, however, in this point of view that we wish to examine the indictment drawn up by the Constitutionnel against the Emperor of Russia. Sublata causa, says the Latin proverb, tollitur effectus. Can it, therefore, be seriously believed that the Emperor Nicholas is the personal cause of the great war raised between barbarism and civilisation? What is the Emperor of Russia? He is not only a sovereign who has abused his omnipotent strength and has degraded the principle of authority among nations, but he is the successor of Alexander, of Catherine, of Elizabeth, and of Peter the First. He is the representative of a system of government in which the abuses with which the Constitutionnel reproaches the present Czar have always existed. He is the continuator of a secular policy, the object of which is the slavery of Europe. He is one of the executors of the will of universal monarchy bequeathed by his ancestors. He has not raised himself up personally of a sudden, like Caesar or Napoleon. His ancestors have prepared every thing for him, painfully, savagely—by crime, by barbarism, by cunning, by arms, by violence—in a word, by all means which are regarded as good by fanatically atheistical powers; he has his cause and his root in them. He would not be Emperor of Russia if he did not carry his stone to their work. When he interfered in Hungary, in order to become the protector of Austria, when he incited revolt in the Sclavo-Greek countries, when he sent Menschikoff to Constantinople, it was the fatality of the precedents of his race which impelled him to these acts. He was the Czar, independently of his name of Nicholas, his qualities, of his fine stature, and of his superb eyes, as the Pope is the Pope, whether he be called Gregory VII or Leo X. What is it, therefore, that you so childishly propose? Do you think it will depend on your fine-sounding phrases to reduce the struggle of the West against the North to the proportions of a coalition against one man? When all Europe united against Napoleon, it coalesced against the representative of revolution, against the chief of that military nation who set his foot on the heads of kings. Although it obtained the abdication it demanded, what did it gain by it? In 1830 revolutionary France again made thrones totter; it did the same in 1848. French principle remained French principle. Personal abdication absolutely changes nothing in the principles of nations and of monarchies. The real enemy of Europe and of its civilisation is not the Sovereign Nicholas I, failing more or less in his duties, and in the obligations which Providence imposes upon the great; it is the Russian system; it is that system which, although Russia is not a commercial power, has heaped up the fleets, the cannon, and the terrible forces of Helsingfors, of Revel, and Cronstadt, and Sebastopol, for the future conquest of universal monarchy. It is this system which has led Russia into all her interventions, and has made of her a new Rome, threatening the universe. You have seamen, cannon, and fleets, as she has; and you have the providential chance of being united to the forces of Europe in a just cause. Take Sebastopol and Cronstadt, and clip the wings of the two-headed eagle, and only occupy yourself in a secondary manner with the present Czar. It is against Russian power, a power out of all bounds, and without all equilibrium, that the war in the east is waged. You would obtain nothing even in obtaining what you demand. Philip II continued what Charles V began, and the successor of Nicholas would perhaps be compelled to go even further than he. This is what is called for by the law of Russian principle, and which will be necessary sooner or later to regulate the state and destiny of the Danubian provinces, in such a way as to prevent them from being exposed, and from exposing Turkey to the violent invasions of which they have been too often the theatre. It is evident that Austria is the Power which is best placed to derive the greatest advantage from the new organization of these provinces, of which she may, by her vicinity, be the most vigilant sentinel and the direct guardian in the name and for the advantage of all Europe. However this may be the entrance of the Austrian forces into the Principalities is already a guarantee for Europe and for the Ottoman empire, in so far as Austria thereby opposes a powerful barrier to the new aggressions of Russia; and, moreover, she promotes the interest of Germany by establishing in fact the free navigation of the Danube—that great route of German commerce, which assuredly will not again be given up to the caprice and omnipotence of Czars. In whatever point of view we consider the policy of Austria, we shall find that it justifies all the hopes of those who asserted that her young sovereign would not hesitate to place the permanent right of civilisation and the superior interests of Europe and Germany above dynastic connections and personal relations."

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