N 0 English writer was better acquainted with the dessous des cartes of the French Revolution than John Wilson Croker. Born in 1780, he talked with people who had taken part in the movement, and spent many years in forming and studying the magnificent collections of revolutionary pamphlets that he afterwards sold to the British Museum. In 1816 the publisher, John Murray, ofiered him the sum of 2 500 guineas to write the complete history of the Revolution, but Croker never found time to do this, and his Essays, reprinted from the Quarterly Review, are all that he has left us of his stores of knowledge. These, though too controversial to appeal to the general public, throw more light on the hidden causes of the revolutionary movement than any book in the English language.