R. A. PROCTOR.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] It seems to me not improbable that the level was determined by simply flooding (though to a very small depth only, of course) the entire area to be levelled—not only the pavement level, but higher levels as the pyramid was raised layer by layer. By completing the outside of each layer first, an enclosed space capable of receiving the water would be formed (the flooding being required once only for each layer), and when the level had been taken the water could be allowed to run off by the interior passages to the well which Piazzi Smyth considers to be symbolical of the bottomless pit.

[44] The irregular descending passage long known as the well, which communicates between the ascending passage and the underground chamber, enables us to ascertain how high the rock rises into the pyramid at this particular part of the base. We thus learn that the rock rises in this place, at any rate, thirty or forty feet above the basal plane.

[45] There is a statement perfectly startling in its inaccuracy, in a chapter of Blake's "Astronomical Myths," derived from Mr. Haliburton's researches, asserting that in the year 2170 B.C. the Pleiades were "exactly at that height that they could be seen in the direction of the Southward-pointing passage of the pyramid." The italics are not mine. As this passage pointed 33-2/3 deg., or thereabouts, below (that is south of) the equator, and the Pleiades were then some 3-2/3 deg. north of the equator, the passage certainly did not then point to the Pleiades. Nor has there been any time since the world began when the Pleiades were anywhere near the direction of the southward pointing passage. In fact they have never been more than 20 deg. south of the equator. The statement follows immediately after another to the surprising effect that in the year 2170 B.C. "the Pleiades really commenced the spring by their midnight culmination." The only comment an astronomer can make on this startling assertion is to repeat with emphasis the word italicized by Mr. Haliburton (or Mr. Blake?). The Pleiades being then in conjunction with what is now called the first point of Aries, culminated at noon, not at midnight, at the time of the vernal equinox.

[46] This date is sometimes given earlier, but when account is taken of the proper motion of these stars we get about the date above mentioned. I cannot understand how Dr. Ball, Astronomer Royal for Ireland, has obtained the date 2248 B.C., unless he has taken the proper motion of Alcyone the wrong way. The proper motion of this star during the last 4000 years has been such as to increase the star's distance from the equinoctial colure; and therefore, of course, the actual interval of time since the star was on the colure is less than it would be calculated to be if the proper motion were neglected.



CONSPIRACIES IN RUSSIA UNDER THE REIGNING CZAR.

I.

Much astonishment has been expressed of late, by those who are too apt to forget the main facts even of contemporary history, that under "so benevolent a prince as Alexander II." the most fearful conspiracies should have become rife. This view of the situation shows a misconception of the whole system of government in Russia, and more especially of the character of the ruling Autocrat, as it has been formed by his education and by the ever-worsening course of his reign. For the proper understanding of what has occurred within the last twelve years or so, we must consequently go back for a moment to Alexander's early training and antecedents. No despotic system can be judged without a knowledge of personal facts relating to its bearer. A sketch of the character of Alexander II. and of his strange acts of "benevolence," will make it clear to the commonest comprehension why his antagonists should at last have met him by wild deeds of conspiracy.

Alexander's arbitrary bias may be said to have been inherited in his blood. A disposition, originally, perhaps, less severe than that of Nicholas, was darkened and vitiated in him from his early days. Custine already remarked the expression of deep melancholy in the Grand Duke; and all those who have seen Alexander II. since have been struck with his sour and sullen morosity. No smile ever lights up this "humane" Czar's face. His uneasy glance is that of the misanthrope; his brow seems overcast as with the lowering shadow of a tragic fate. The harsh way in which he was brought up by his martinet father, without the slightest regard for his somewhat delicate health, no doubt laid a foundation for this pensive sadness, which, under a pernicious Court atmosphere, and with the terrible recollections crowding about his family history, gradually changed into the fierceness of the Tyrant.

Poor royal humanity is sometimes strangely led up to its task in life. Almost from infancy the sickly boy had to don the soldier's uniform. All joyous sprightliness was crushed out of the infantine heir of a barbarous Imperialism. His education by the crowned corporal who happened to be his parent, appeared to aim mainly at making him physically and in character as rigid as a ramrod. By nature of a sensuous bent, he had to undergo all the ordeals of barrack-room practices, which Nicholas held to be the proper sum and substance of human life.

The stern nature and teaching of that typical tyrant came out one day in a striking manner during the early boyhood of Alexander. Even Imperial children do not seem to be able to shake off the dark historical recollections that hang about the Winter Palace. In the manner of children they will make a ghastly sport of them. Once, when they were in a specially jocular mood, Alexander, in company with his brother Constantine and some comrades in play, enacted—as youngsters in their apishly imitative mood will do—one of the most hideous scenes that concluded a previous reign. The throttling of the Emperor Paul was the subject! Alexander, standing for Paul, was assaulted and thrown down by his brother, who knelt upon his chest. With the aid of the sportive accomplices, a cord was passed round the victim's throat. It is said that young Constantine took a malicious pleasure in putting into this semblance of strangulation rather an unexpected deal of energy.

"For mercy's sake! For mercy's sake!" Alexander cried, with half-stifled voice, and at last with a fearful yell.

Nicholas, hurrying out from his room, beheld the spectacle before him in deep consternation. When the matter was explained to him, he severely reproved and actually punished his eldest-born. "It is not worthy of an Emperor," he said, "to call out for mercy!"

This well-authenticated anecdote has been told by writers who expressed the most adulatory sentiments towards the present Czar. It is to be found in Castille's highly flattering biography of Alexander II., published about the time of his accession to the throne. The incident, loathsome as it must appear to every sensitive mind, strikingly paints both the gloom that always hangs about the Russian Court, and the kind of education given by Nicholas to his offspring.

The youthful despotic propensities of Alexander may be seen from an account given by another of his admiring biographers, Mr. J. G. Hesekiel. This writer enthusiastically swings the censer before Nicholas as the "Iron Knight of Legitimacy" and the "Invincible Champion of Government by the Grace of God." (I may mention in passing that Mr. Hesekiel has done the life of Prince Bismarck into similar adulatory prose). At the age of fourteen—he relates—the boy-prince, Alexander, in going through a state room of the Palace, was respectfully greeted by the assembled high dignitaries of the Empire, senators, generals, and so forth. They all rose and bowed before the Heir-Apparent. The boy's vanity being flattered, he purposely came back several times, expecting the grey-beards on each occasion to rise and salaam before him. When he found that they thought they had done their duty by the first salutation, he angrily complained against them to his father. Nicholas, however, blamed the son for his unreasonable exaction. This vicious arrogance of the boy ripened afterwards into the haughtiness of the despot, being but slightly mitigated by a naturally melancholy disposition, which sometimes gave the appearance of comparative softness.

Of Constantine, the second son of Nicholas, there is a further characteristic anecdote on record. It is to be found even in publications otherwise marked by servile feelings towards the Court. We all know at what a supernaturally early age the purple-born are appointed to high titular positions in the State Administration or in the army. In Russia, where the "right divine of kings to govern wrong" is pushed to its most logical or illogical consequences, this royal custom flourishes to excess. At the mature age of eight, Alexander was appointed Chancellor of the University of Finland. His brother Constantine was nominated in early youth High Admiral of the Fleet. One day, Constantine, between whom and his elder brother there was little love lost, had Alexander arrested because he had come on board ship without special authorization. Something of the sentiment of Franz Moor, in Schiller's Robbers, seems to have animated Constantine in his youth. He was often heard to utter a malediction against the law of heredity. He declared that, being born when his father (Nicholas) was already on the throne, he (Constantine) had a better right of succession than Alexander, who had been born when Nicholas was only a Grand Duke. He further said that, after the death of Nicholas, he would contend against Alexander with the object of partitioning the Empire.

These may seem trifling occurrences—mere freaks of childhood. They would certainly be so regarded in countries where the nation practically possesses self-government and the Crown is mainly an ornamental cipher, or where the sovereign privilege is at least largely circumscribed by the parliamentary power. It is different in an Empire like Russia, with its murderous dynastic antecedents. There, the personal character of the princely personages is of the utmost importance; for a youthful freak or hideous trick may point to a coming horrible event. In olden times, previous to the Tatar dominion, Russia passed through the so-called Appanage Period of Separate Principalities, when the Empire was actually partitioned. The feuds which then tore the various branches of the Rurik family greatly facilitated the Mongol conquest that weighed upon the country for centuries. With the condition of Russia such as it was until lately, and still is for that matter, a bold attempt on the part of a Prince second in birth could not be said to be beyond the range of possibility. Even now we hear of a deep estrangement between the ruling Autocrat and the Czarewitch, reaching even to such an extent that for a moment there was an intention of arresting the latter.

Nothing has come of the childish threat of the Grand Duke Constantine, who to this day fills the post of Admiral-General of the Russian Fleet. Still, the incident alluded to has its value. When a whole nation is disinherited from political rights, a younger member of the ruling House, of violent and ambitious temper, may easily take the idea into his head of altering, by a palace plot, the very basis of the Empire for his own special benefit. What looks like boyish play may in time to come turn into a tragedy. These dangers, characteristic of all autocracies, can only be done away with by the introduction of a settled order of Constitutional law, conferring the chief power in the State upon representative bodies.

II.

The death of Nicholas, shortly before the end of the Crimean War, remains to this day enshrouded in darkness and doubt.

His proud spirit had been deeply humiliated by a series of defeats. He who once posed as the arbiter of the destinies of Continental Europe had been beaten, not only by the Western Allies, but, before that, even by the Turks single-handed. He wrathfully avowed that "he had been deceived as to the state of public opinion in England." The messengers of the Peace Society, the language held by the organs of the Manchester school, had emboldened him to try to realize the secular dream of Russian despots,—namely, the conquest of Constantinople. The disenchantment he experienced gave even his iron frame a terrible shock. Yet his haughty temper forbade him to entertain offers of, still more to sue for, peace. Those surrounding him, including his nearest by kinship, were afraid of angering the ruthless man by unwelcome counsel.

At the same time vague murmurs were heard in society against the absolutistic regime which had led Russia to the brink of utter ruin. From the southern part of the Empire, where opinion, since the days of Cossack and Ukraine independence, had always been the most advanced, threatening tales came up of a spirit of rebellion among the peasantry, upon whom the relay duties and other hardships connected with the war weighed most heavily. There was a universal feeling that the removal of Nicholas from this world's stage would be a blessing.

In the midst of this darkening situation men learnt that the Czar was slightly indisposed; immediately afterwards, that he was—dead. He had only taken a cold; but the illness—as the manifesto of Alexander II. afterwards said—"developed itself with incredible rapidity." The manifesto added:—"Let us bow before the mysterious decrees of Providence!"

Was the mystery a real or merely an apparent one?

Abroad a rumour quickly spread of foul play having once more taken place in the Winter Palace. In the German and the Danish press—for instance, in the Copenhagen Faedrelandet, and the Berlin National Zeitung and Volks-Zeitung—surmises were openly uttered that the Russian Emperor had died from poison. Not a few thought he had fallen a victim to a palace plot in the interest of the maintenance of the dynasty which was endangered by his obstinacy. In a medical journal of this country it was shown that the bulletins concerning the course of his illness were, at all events, quite at variance with well-known physiological laws. In a lithographed pamphlet—attributed to Dr. Mandt, the physician-in-ordinary to Nicholas—it was alleged that the Czar, in a fit of life-weariness, had himself asked for strychnine, and forced his physician to prepare it for him. A noted Russian writer, Mr. Ivan Golovin, in a book published at Leipzig about eight years ago,[47] refers to the statement of this pamphlet. He himself remarks that the reason for the head of the Emperor having been covered up, when lying in state, was, that his features were so terribly disfigured by the poison as to render it advisable to conceal the face.

It is impossible to unravel the truth. This much can, however, be said beyond mere probability, that, if Nicholas had not been suddenly taken away, the contrast between his iron rule at home and his continued defeats on the field of battle would have roused a spirit of rebellion and mutiny very similar to that against which he had to contend in the ensanguined streets of the capital at the beginning of his reign. As it was, men expected that his successor would prove more pliant. The prevailing feeling of dissatisfaction did not, therefore, at first assume a revolutionary shape.

Perhaps it was a consciousness of being surrounded by men who watched him closely which made Alexander II. speak out in rather a peremptory tone in his manifesto of March 2, 1855. Monarchs who fear an attack upon their sovereign privileges often seek to terrify their would-be antagonists by bold language. "I hereby declare solemnly," Alexander said, "that I will remain faithful to all the views of my father, and persevere in the line of political principles which have served as guiding maxims both to my uncle, Alexander I., and to him. These principles are those of the Holy Alliance. If that Alliance no longer exists, it is certainly not the fault of my august father." The fling against Austria, which had half taken the side of the Western Allies in the Crimean War, and the covert reference to Prussia, which had refused making common military cause with Russia, was unmistakable.

So far as public opinion existed then, or could make itself heard in the Czar's Empire, the impression of this manifesto was a highly unfavourable one. Its allusions to the maintenance of the political principles of Nicholas and to the maxims of the Holy Alliance were little relished—all the less so, because there was not a word about coming reforms. Military preparations were continued. The whole country seemed to be destined to become a military camp. No prospects were held out either of the emancipation of the serfs, or of the admission of any section of the nation to a share in the Government.

Soon, however, Alexander II. had to alter his tone. The wave of public discontent rising ever higher, whilst the Russian arms suffered defeat after defeat, peace had to be concluded, and the full stringency of the despotic rule could no longer be maintained. Gortschakoff was substituted for Nesselrode in the Chancellorship. At that time this was almost considered progress—so unspeakably degrading was the slavery of the nation, and so apt are men in their despair to catch at a straw.

Gortschakoff, nevertheless, pronounced the famous saying, "La Russie ne boude pas; elle se recueille!" The old war policy had been scotched, not killed. Scarcely had the army returned from the campaign, before Government busied itself with a well-studied plan for a network of railways, not in the commercial, but in the strategical interest. With the same object of an ulterior return to the aggressive war policy, Alexander II. sought an interview with Napoleon III. soon after the conclusion of the Crimean War. Piedmont, also, was diplomatically approached in a remarkably friendly manner. England was to be isolated. Revenge was to be ultimately taken against her. Between all these significant, though somewhat weak attempts, the new Czar addressed to the Marshals of the Polish nobility at Warsaw his threatening words:—"Before all, no dreams, gentlemen!... If need be, I shall know how to punish with the utmost severity; and with the utmost severity I mean to punish!" ("Avant tout, point de reveries, messieurs!... Au besoin, je saurai sevir, et je sevirai!")

Thus the autocratic vein strongly stood out even in this more sickly type of a barbarous autocracy. It is the fashion at present, at least among some who take the name of "philosophical Radicals" in vain when they curtsy before a Machiavellian tyrant, to dwell with admiring pride upon the philanthropic character of Alexander the Benevolent. All the cardinal virtues are his. He is the Liberator of the Serfs, the Deliverer of Downtrodden Nationalities, the Educator and Friend of the People—a monstrous paragon of princely perfection. The truth is that this Czar, albeit lacking the nerve of his sire, has from early youth shown the full absolutistic bent. Dire necessity only brought him to the accomplishment of some reforms. But the evidence before us clearly shows that in this he acted on the well-known lines of despotic calculation, and that he never did good without the intention of thereby preventing what to him appeared to be the greater evil for his position as an irresponsible autocrat, by the so-called "Grace of God."

III.

So deeply shaken was the Empire by the events of 1853-56, that Alexander did not dare for several years—in fact, not until 1863—to ordain any fresh recruitment for the army. This necessity greatly diminished the oppressive power of the Crown. At the same time, public opinion showed signs of a threatening unrest. An "Underground Literature," as it was called, began once more to express the ideas of the better-educated, progressive classes. Among the troops, the "Songs of the Crimean Soldiers," by Tolstoy, an artillery officer, made a great stir. Count Orloff, then Minister of the Police, wrote to the Commanding-General in the South, that he should silence these rebel songs. The General somewhat bluntly replied, "Please come yourself, and try to silence them!"

Among the secret publications then in vogue there were some political poems of Pushkin, hitherto only known in clandestine manuscript form. Pushkin is often called, with a great deal of exaggeration, the Russian Byron, whereas others will only let him pass as a Byron travestied, wanting in originality, like most of his Russian brother-poets of the end of the last and the beginning of this century. At all events, one of Pushkin's utterances containing the words,

"I hate thee and thy race, Thou autocratic villain,"

does not lack in allusive clearness. Secretly printed abroad, his writings were largely propagated at Alexander the Second's accession. Again, men like Lawroff—who, ten years later, was imprisoned as a suspect, after Karakasoff's attempt against the life of the Czar—had celebrated the advent of the successor of Nicholas with such ironically questionable sentiments as this:—

"Be proud, ye Russian men, Of being the slaves of a Czar!"

Writers of comedies, novelists, delineators of the life of the people, ultra-realistic and cynical describers of the criminal classes arose in rapid succession, whose tendency, one and all, was to show to what a state of corruption Russian society, from top to bottom, had come under the famous "Champion of Order," the dreaded Nicholas. That Czar had been in the habit of speaking of Turkey as the Sick Man. Russia was now shown to be the Sick Man. Neither did St. Petersburg, Moscow or the other chief towns, alone serve as a theme for this kind of semi-political literature. "Provincial Sketches" also came out in a similar strain. These publications obtained an ever-increasing success among those classes—few in number, it is true—which were able to read. A whole "Revelation Literature" sprang up, dealing with cases of governmental corruption. The censorship could not be upheld any longer against these writers with the strict severity of the previous reign. A beaten Absolutism had to do things a little more cautiously; and the watchful eyes of men hitherto treated like slaves quickly found out, with the rapid glance and intuition of the oppressed, that it was safe to "dare it on" a little more than they would have dreamt of doing before the end of the Crimean War. Truly, those Liberals in this country who now denounce that war as a mistake and even a crime, do not know, or do not care to remember, what a relief it brought to Russian Liberals themselves.

Soon after the death of Nicholas, desires, until then only muttered, were publicly expressed for the recall and the amnesty of the Martyrs of the Conspiracy and the Insurrection of December, 1825. Pestel, Ryleieff, Bestujeff-Rumin, and the other leaders, had been strung up on the gallows. Many of those transported to Siberia had died a miserable felon's death in the lead-mines. Brought up in the lap of luxury, they ended like galley-slaves, because they had loved freedom more than wealth and ease. It is reported of one of the political prisoners, a nobleman, that he died in Kamtschatka with a chain round his neck, fastened to the wall. Others had been sent to the Caucasus, which in Russia was long ago said to be "not so much a frontier as a grave-yard." There they had fallen in a hateful war against brave, independent mountain tribes, as the unwilling tools of an aggressive tyranny. Still, some of the sufferers were yet alive—among them men of the foremost families of the country. They had to be allowed to come back. They came—mere shadows and ruins of their former selves. But their decrepit condition was the most telling evidence of the infamy of the Tyrant who had fortunately passed away.

In the salons of the upper classes these suffering witnesses of a terrible past received lavish proofs of admiration. Men would listen with sympathetic avidity to the tales of horror told by them. All those present at such a gathering made it a point to be profuse towards the martyrs with little attentions such as only women ordinarily receive from the other sex. Thirty years—a long time—had passed since the armed struggle in the streets of St. Petersburg. Now, all of a sudden, memories were revived. Political tendencies, which some imagined had died out, came up afresh among a younger generation, for whom the "December Conspiracy" was surrounded with a poetical halo. There was danger in the air for the autocratic principle.

Count Rostoptchin, the same who ordered the burning of Moscow in 1812, said in 1825 he could not understand that attempt at a revolution. He "could understand the French Revolution, because there the ordinary citizen wished to become an aristocrat, but he could not conceive aristocrats wishing to become simple burghers." That was the version of a cynical, though otherwise clever, member of the nobility, who was unable to comprehend the spirit of self-sacrifice for noble aims showing itself even among the wealthy and the "noble" by birth. However, had Count Rostoptchin only been capable of feeling the degradation under which the Russian aristocracy itself lies in its relations with a despotic Crown, he might, even from his own point of view as a mere man of the world, have found a reason for the uprising of independent characters among men of his own rank.

IV.

The more cultured and wealthier classes again came to the front as political agitators, at the accession of Alexander. They wanted to throw down the Chinese Wall which Nicholas had built around them—if it is not an insult to the Chinese to compare the wall they erected as a protection against barbarism with the barrier set up by Nicholas against Western ideas of culture and freedom. At first, Alexander II. did not hold out any hope of reform. Driven to straits, he busied himself with throwing a sop to public opinion by various small relaxations in administrative matters. They were small enough; and they were given with a niggard hand.

Anyone taking a survey of the earlier part of the reign of Alexander II. must see that the main object of his government was to foil the tendency towards the introduction of parliamentary institutions, which was sullenly but perceptibly making its way among the better educated section of the nation; that, with the view of attaining this reactionary end, he pursued the traditional despotic policy of approaching the lower classes on the one hand, and engaging the country in fresh warlike enterprise abroad on the other. Foiled in Europe by England and France, he throws his armies, after the conclusion of the Peace of Paris, with renewed fury upon the Tcherkess tribes. They had long barred the way of Russia towards Asia Minor and Persia, thereby insuring the safety of India from that side. Now Schamyl, the hoary-headed warrior-prophet, is compelled to surrender in his last mountain stronghold. From his lofty Alpine home, which is filled with the renown of his romantic deeds, he is carried a prisoner to St. Petersburg, there to be stared at by the crowd of decorated slaves of autocracy.

With this "pacification" of the Caucasus, the Czar obtained the unimpeded use of the high-road leading into Asia Minor. He then struck a blow against the independent tribes on the eastern shore of the Caspian. With the Court of Teheran he entered into relations calculated to threaten Turkey with a double danger from the Asiatic side, in case of a renewal of war. Again, he enlarged his Empire, at the cost of China, by filching territories as extensive as some of the greatest European countries. In what once was Independent Turkestan, his armies overran one Khanate after the other, thus coming nearer and nearer to India from the north-west. There is a striking war-picture by Vereshagin, with a pyramid of skulls as its centre—a very Golgotha of the horrors of massacre; but Russian monarchs, in their ceaseless career of conquest, out-Tatar the Tatar in the fiendishness of their atrocities. Witness the order given by General Kaufmann, the pampered tool of Alexander II., in these Turkestan campaigns:—"Kill all; spare no age, or sex!" Witness also the death-dance that took place when his Majesty, the crowned head of Holy Russia, the magnanimous Champion of Religion and Humanity, made his victorious entry into Plevna,[48] carousing there jubilantly, whilst the Turkish wounded lay unattended in the town for fully two days—a helpless mass of men, dying in raving agony.

I have anticipated for a moment the course of events. In glancing at the reign of Alexander II., the eye involuntarily runs over the full panorama of tyrannic outrages. From the time of the wholesale proscription of the Tcherkess and Abchasian tribes to the heart-rending horrors committed against Toork populations and wounded Ottoman prisoners of war, there has been, in his career, a perfect climax of inhumanity. Conferences for the professed humanization of warfare were, with him, only the hypocritical precursors of fresh barbarities. But it is not necessary to forestall events. Enough was done in the way of atrocities even in the earlier years of his rule.

Between the conquests made in the Caucasus and the annexations on the Amoor or in Central Asia, Alexander II. bullied, and at last put down, by unspeakably cruel means,—even as did his predecessor,—the national aspirations of unhappy Poland. Like Nicholas, he kept the road to Siberia alive with the wretched convoys of unfortunate exiles. Even in the Baltic Provinces, whence the Russian Government draws so many able administrators, diplomatists, and military leaders, whose capacities might be employed in a better cause, he began a system of persecution against the German population, of so galling a nature that it threatened, in course of time, to alienate that very mainstay of the public administration. The special towns' charters of the Baltic Provinces were infringed. The German tongue, hitherto possessing full privileges, was threatened. A process of Russification was attempted; the superior civilized element being pushed and annoyed by the inferior and barbarous one.

These acts of the earliest years of the reign of Alexander II. have to be kept in mind, in order to understand that humanitarian motives were not the ruling ones in the final adoption of the Serf Emancipation measure. On his death-bed, Nicholas is stated to have said to his son:— "Thou hast two enemies—the nobility and the Poles. Emancipate the serfs; and do not allow the Poles any Constitution!"

It is impossible, with the mystery which envelopes the last days of Nicholas, to know whether these words are authentic. At all events, Alexander did not give back to the Poles the Constitution they possessed until 1830. Nor did he grant a Constitution to the Russians either. He emancipated the serfs—but not before the principles which had actuated the Conspirators of 1817-25 once more began to show themselves among the upper strata of society; and in passing his measure, he mainly sought to deprive a restive nobility of some of its influence, and to take the wind out of the sails of those Liberal agitators who would have made the abolition of bondage the outcome of the establishment of a freely-chosen Legislature. When, finally, the Poles, counting upon a corresponding movement in Russia, resolved upon that heroic, though desperate, rising which by anticipation I alluded to in the last article, such fresh cruelties were practised by Alexander II. against the vanquished victims, that every human heart worthy of the name must shudder at the mere recollection of them.

From those days, however, the Conspiratory Movement in Russia began to assume larger proportions. What I have said in the preceding pages, goes far to explain the violence by which that movement has latterly been characterized.

V.

Partly from the aggressiveness which is the natural bent of a despotic military monarchy, partly from the wish to check the home-growth of Liberal sentiments by frequent blood-letting abroad, the government of Alexander II. has tried to meet the danger which has been gathering round the autocratic system by lighting up foreign wars. Central Asia has served him for that purpose. So has Turkey. The flag of ambition was flaunted before public opinion as soon as there was a revival of the Opposition tendency in internal affairs.

An attempt at opening up the whole Eastern Question was made as early as 1870, when France and Germany were locked together in deadly embrace. The confidential despatches and cypher telegrams exchanged in 1870 between Mr. de Novikoff, the Russian Ambassador at Vienna, and Mr. Ionin, the Russian Consul-General at Ragusa, which fortunately came to light some years ago, have fully proved that even then Muscovite policy busied itself with getting up a phantom insurrection in Herzegovina, preparatory to an attack upon Turkey. Nor is it a secret that a Bulgarian Committee of Insurrection, affiliated to Russia, had been in existence at Bucharest for years previous to the late war. All these propagandistic intrigues were in a measure designed to occupy some of the more active minds in Russia, who hesitated, between home reform and Panslavistic ambition.

The Czar has indulged in his warlike enterprizes, but he has deceived himself in his calculations as regards home policy. All his frightful spilling of blood abroad has not been able to prevent the formation and extension of what is called the Nihilist Conspiracy. Side by side with his wars, the Secret League has grown apace, overshadowing all his glory. So extensive have the ramifications of that Conspiracy become that the liveliest interest is now awakened as to its origin and its earliest germs.

In the nature of things it is impossible, at present, to speak with full certainty on this subject. The Russian revolutionists, being engaged in a desperate struggle, have neither the leisure necessary for writing such statements; nor is it their interest to go into details. Judicial inquiries have lifted, here and there, some corner of the mysterious winding-sheets in which the secret Vehme is enveloped. But more light can only be expected after the Conspiracy has been entirely crushed,—in which case, however, owing to the heroic silence which its adherents generally maintain, a great deal of knowledge will for ever be buried in the grave,—or the fuller clearing up will come when, as I would fain hope, this fierce struggle ends with a triumph, whether complete or partial, of the cause of freedom.

Even under the iron rule of Nicholas, there were, many years after the St. Petersburg insurrection of 1825, still some faint traces of Secret Societies, in which the spirit of Pestel and Murawieff was continued. One of these occult Leagues was that of Petrascheski, detected in 1849, whose members were sentenced to forced labour and to banishment to Siberia. A nearer approach to the plebeian element than was observable in the Conspiracies of 1817-25, characterized this later association. Altogether the more educated classes gradually began to seek closer contact with the people at large.

This task was in so far facilitated by the tyrannical Czar-Pope Nicholas, in that he not only trod under foot that portion of the nobiliary class which aimed at a Constitutional share of the political power, but also persecuted the various dissenting sects in the most barbarous fashion.

Under an outward gloss of official orthodoxy, Russia is eaten up with a chaos of sects. The Raskolniks, or Old Believers, profess to be the real Church; yet the simplest civic rights were always denied to them. Besides those Old Believers, numerous other sects exist. They in their turn are surrounded by a strange fringe of "Runners," "Jumpers," "Flagellants," "Self-Mutilators," and other eccentric or anti-social pests which crop up most thickly in the dank shadow of an obscurantist despotism, whose very roots, however, they gradually destroy and encroach upon. Persecuted men often seek solace in wild hopes and prophetic beliefs, which, if strongly nurtured by agitation, are apt to imperil the persecutor. Under Nicholas, the persecutor of all Dissenters, popular seers occasionally arose, who in their occult meetings predicted from the book of Esdra that, after the reign of Nicholas should be over, the Monarchy would fall down under his son and that "the people then would be happy and free."

Such a state of feeling in the lower and more backward social strata rendered it at all events easier for would-be reformers of the conspirator type to enter into closer contact with the plebeian element. Though educated men could not have any sympathy with the mystic views and tone, they found a practical ally in the sullen dissatisfaction which drove Dissenters to opposition against the Government. So it was under Nicholas. So it still is under Alexander II. It may suit the sacerdotal Ritualists, who would fain establish a connection of High Church Anglicanism with the official orthodoxy of the East, to promote the aggressive policy of the Czar. But English Dissenters, who prize their freedom from clerical trammels, might remember that Autocracy in Russia represents all that is worst in political as well as in religious fields. Besides upholding the Stuart doctrine with the means of a Gengis Khan and a Tamerlane, it pretends, in Church matters, to a Papal authority, crushing the Bible Christian, the eccentric Mystic, and the religious Rationalist, with an equally heavy hand—and, if need be, as in the case of the Greek Uniates under Alexander II., with the Cossack knout.

In the educated class of Russia, two very different political currents are observable: the one inclining towards Western Liberalism, whilst the other cultivates the Nationalist sentiment under rather antiquated forms. The "Westerners," "Europeans," or "Liberals," are often regarded by the more stolid adherents of Katkoff as men lacking in patriotism. Between these two parties—if we could speak of parties in a country which has no ordered public life—a third group is observable: the Panslavists, many of whom pursue, under a Liberal mask, aims favourable to the aggrandizement of Czardom. Not a few of the Panslavists are in reality mere Government tools. Others, who, like Aksakoff, began as independent workers in the Panslavist cause, finally yielded to Government temptation; but after a while even they were found to be too much imbued with reforming ideas, and consequently were placed under police surveillance.

The great mass of the Russian people has nothing to do with Panslavism; it does not even know what it is. The idea of a Slav brotherhood is foreign to it. It can be made, by much priestly preaching, to take a sort of bigoted interest in alleged co-religionists who are said to be ill-treated by "unbelieving Turks;" but the interest and the understanding do not go beyond that. Such is the distinct statement made lately by one of the best observers, Ivan Turgenieff, the novelist, in a conversation with a German writer. As to the revolutionary party in Russia, it has more and more become estranged from the Panslavistic tendency—so much so that at present it stands in direct opposition to it.

Alexander Herzen,[49] who favoured the Panslavistic cause, could still speak, retrospectively, of Russian Czars as being "Robespierres on horseback"—an expression of so doubtful a value that it rather reminds us of the pseudo-revolutionary language of Napoleonism than of the purer Democratic principles. Herzen's idea being that Constantinople should become the capital of a great Russo-Slav Empire, we can easily understand that he should have represented Muscovite history under such a deceptive garb. Bakunin also was a Panslavist for a time, but of a different type, aiming as he did at a loose Democratic Federation of the various Slav tribes. The impossibility of this federation all those will acknowledge who think it equally chimerical to form a Romanic Federation between nations so dissimilar in origin, history, language, and aspirations, as are the Italians, the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the French-speaking section of the Swiss, and the Roumans of Moldo-Wallachia and Hungary. Or would it be less chimerical to try to form a Teutonic Federation among Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders, German-Swiss, Englishmen, North Americans, and the various English colonies?

Nihilism, on its part, has nothing in common with those Panslavist intrigues which mainly cover an Imperialist ambition. Nihilism, as at present known, is, in fact, the very negation of such dangerous ambitious schemes.

The first Nihilist Society, properly speaking, is said to have been founded by Russian students about the year 1859. German works on philosophy and natural science were then much in demand, as forbidden fruit among the aspiring youths of Russia. The books not being allowed to pass the frontier, stray copies were smuggled in, and lithographed translations passed from hand to hand. The Agricultural College of Petrovski, near Moscow, is considered to have been one of the first places where young men became imbued with such advanced ideas. In this neighbourhood the Netchaieff tragedy was enacted. Among literary men, Tchernitcheffski was one of the first who became a "Nihilist." He suffered for it by being banished to Siberia.

The word "Nihilist" is, however, a somewhat misleading one. It was conferred at first as a nickname. Afterwards it was adopted (like the name of the Gueux) in a kind of dare-devil mood; and has covered, ever since, a great many varieties of political and social discontent, as well as of philosophical Radicalism. There are Nihilists who, from the sheer hopelessness engendered by a tyranny lasting a thousand years, have come to cultivate a Philosophy of Despair, of Disgust, and of Destruction, without troubling themselves as to the constitution of the Future. These are men that profess a wish to do away with all State organizations, for the sake of a morbid Individualism. Others there are who, in the semi-revolutionary vein of Comte, incline towards a socialist Collectivism in a rather utopian, not to say hierarchic, form. To them the word "Nihilist" is scarcely applicable.

Strictly speaking, the word "Nihilist" covers, at most, a small group of persons of a brooding and impracticable temper, such as is sometimes created under the darkest tyrannies. It may be doubted whether the majority of those who use the dagger and the revolver without compunction against the vile sbirri of an intolerable despotism would call themselves Nihilists, or even Socialists. The greater number of the members of the secret leagues are believed to hold views not far removed from those which have found a practical expression in some freely constituted countries. The violent means employed are, with many, only the outcome of a feeling of revenge easily to be understood under the circumstances; or else they are regarded as a dire necessity in insurrectionary warfare. True, there have been Russians abroad who spoke of "abolishing the Family and Property." But nothing warrants the assumption that this is the principle of the Nihilists in Russia itself.

If either mere anarchy, or a system of barrack Communism, be the object of the majority of the men and women whose deeds have of late riveted the attention of all Europe, it is hard to comprehend that these conspirators should have secured so many friends among classes which by education and position cannot possibly have any sympathy with mere destructive or utopian schemes. Of the existence of numerous friends of the Nihilists in the higher classes there is, however, no doubt. Thus only can the hold be explained which the occult propaganda of this hic et ubique conspiracy has obtained upon the commonwealth.

VI.

I have mentioned the participation of women in the present desperate struggle. Students, lawyers, officers, Government officials, landed proprietors, merchants, all kinds of men of the more educated or well-to-do classes, have been found to be mixed up with the "Nihilist" Conspiracy. By far the most characteristic feature, however, is the share which women have taken in the late startling events. When women thus actively and enthusiastically step forth in a revolutionary or national movement, even to the extent of sacrificing their lives, it is always a sign of a people's feelings being wrought up to the highest tension. So great a strain upon the more delicate nature of the fairer sex cannot be borne very long. It is only at a time of extreme crisis that the unusual event occurs; and Russia is now at the very acme of such a crisis.

We have seen, in succession, Vjera Sassulitch, a captain's daughter; Sophia Loeschern von Herzfeld, a lady of high rank; Nathalie von Armfeldt, the daughter of an Imperial councillor; Mary Kovalevski, who also ranks as a noble; Katharina Sarandovitch, the daughter of a tchinovnik, or official; and several more, of equally prominent position, playing in the revolutionary contest a most remarkable part. They have suffered imprisonment; they have risked their lives; some of them have been condemned to hard labour. One of them was sentenced to be shot—but this latter decision even the Czar, though having to wage war against women, dared not carry out. This extraordinary mixing of the female sex in a widely ramified conspiracy is of so phenomenal a character that a sketch of the educational and emancipatory movement which led up to it, may well be here in its place.

By way of contrast, let us first look into times which seem to lie ages behind us, but which are yet in the recollection of a great many.

When Gogol wrote his "Dead Souls," not quite forty years ago, the education of young ladies in Russia was conducted on wonderful principles of "finishing." Young ladies—said Gogol, with cutting satire—receive, as is well known, a very good education. Three things are looked upon, in the establishments to which they are sent, as the pillars of all human virtues: namely, first, a knowledge of the French language; secondly, the piano; thirdly, domestic economy, which consists of the embroidery of purses and other objects of surprise. "Our present time," he added, "has shown itself most inventive as regards the perfection of this educational method; for in one establishment they begin with the piano, and then go on to French, concluding with the domestic economy alluded to; whereas in another school the embroidering of purses forms the introduction, upon which French and the piano follow. It will be seen that there is much difference in the methods."

Gribojedoff also, in a telling comedy, has some striking sarcasms on the superficiality and hollow frivolousness of the education of girls of the upper classes. "We bring up our daughters," he says, "as if they were destined to be the wives of the dancing-masters and the buffoons to whom we entrust their instruction." Now and then a reformer started up, but in a very curious fashion. One of the earliest was Tatjana Passek, the cousin of Alexander Herzen, of whom a writer, who adopts the signature of "Borealis," in the Berlin Gegenwart, says that in consequence of the straitened circumstances of her father, she was compelled to open a Young Ladies' Establishment in a provincial town. Intelligent, but without any solid knowledge, she herself relates in her memoirs how she taught ancient history off-hand, chiefly by means of a lively imagination. She even critically expounded the philosophical systems of Greece and Rome without knowing or understanding them. Her handbook for Greek History was "The Travels of Young Anacharsis." There was no system or connection in what she taught, but the sprightliness of her delivery made up for the defect. "When we came to the history of Sparta, we became so enthusiastic for the Lacedaemonian girls that we tried to imitate their hardened style of life, washing ourselves with cold water, promenading with bare feet, doing gymnastics, drinking no tea, and ceasing to cry. When I look back upon these performances, I wonder how my pupils remained in good health." The same lady reports that the friends of her youth, disgusted with the hollowness of drawing-room life, had endeavoured to satisfy their emancipatory inclinations by donning men's dress, indulging in Amazonian tastes, and secretly frequenting taverns where, with their aristocratic small hands, they jubilantly raised the foaming cup.

So much for girls' education in the higher strata. As to the immense mass of the Russian population they were left to rot, intellectually, in utter neglect. The school system in some Western countries—including central and southern Italy before 1859-60, France, and even England until a few years ago—was bad enough. In Russia it was simply nonexistent. The private educational establishments and grammar schools in a few towns, which were destined for the more well-to-do middle class, were sorry copies of the few Government institutions. I have before mentioned how, under the present reign, a movement for a more Liberal education arose, which, however, soon led to students' tumults and to severe police measures. In girls' education, too, a progressive movement was initiated. For a short time it was said that the Empress herself, whose German origin inclined her to that view, would assume its protectorate. But soon it was seen that Government mainly busied itself with bureaucratic regulations, whilst the foundation of the girls' schools for which these extensive and often harassing regulations were framed, proceeded with extreme slowness. In fact, the regulations were there; but in most cases the schools were wanting.

Meanwhile, the aspiring girlhood of Russia threw itself with avidity upon the new sources of knowledge, scant as they were, which had at last been opened to it. The Minister of Public Instruction, Golovnin, who was in office between 1861-66, promoted, in his quality of an opponent of the classical method of education, by preference the study of natural science. Hence a realistic tendency—often verging upon the harsh and the crude—became the prevailing tone. Girls, sick of the idleness and the conventional frivolities of social life, eagerly devoted themselves to scientific pursuits, both as students at the new academies, and as subscribers to the courses of lectures which were getting into vogue. The very antagonists of the more extreme "emancipatory" practices acknowledge that the greater number of these lady-students, who soon were driven to seek for an opportunity of acquiring knowledge at a foreign university—that is, at Zurich—distinguished themselves by much diligence and talent, as well as by a spirit of personal sacrifice in regard to worldly comforts.

At the same time it must be averred that some of them, yielding to an exaltation and eccentricity easily aroused in womankind, mentally overbalanced themselves as it were, and began to assume hideous mannish and hermaphrodite ways. The close-cropped hair, the unnecessarily spectacled face, the short tight jacket, the cigar, and the frequenting of public-houses were unpleasant outward signs; but far more deplorable was the cynic tone. These were and are the sad excrescences of an otherwise laudable aspiration; but it may be hoped that in course of time the excrescences will disappear. The sooner the better, else the best friends of the progressive tendency among womankind will turn away from it in sorrow and anger at the unsexing of the sex, whose tenderer nature—in Schiller's words, let us hope not quite antiquated—is destined to "weave wreaths of heavenly roses into the earthly life."

However, all the odd eccentricities, all the sad contempt of the natural and recognised forms of beauty, delicacy, or even decency, into which some may have allowed themselves to be betrayed by their eagerness to throw off intolerable intellectual fetters, must not render us unjust to the sounder aspect of the movement. Nor can those vagaries prevent us from giving a due meed of admiring praise to the heroism displayed by those nobly aspiring women, with whom the exaggerated manner is more an outward form, whilst their self-sacrificing deeds in the cause of the freedom of the nation and the welfare of the neglected masses, show the true humanity and nobility of their heart. "Dead souls" they are not. The fire of enthusiasm is within them.

VII.

After this rapid general survey of the condition of mind of the more advanced women in Russia I come to the tragic story of Vjera Sassulitch. It is a story typical of the base cruelty of autocratic government; typical also of the results such a system must needs produce.

The victim and heroine of that ever-memorable tragedy was not, at first, a member of any secret organization. Far from it. At the age of seventeen, Vjera, then a mere school-girl, had made the acquaintance of another school-girl, whose brother was a student. In the course of this innocent girlish friendship she was induced to take care of a few letters destined for the student, Netchaieff, who afterwards played a part in the revolutionary movement. A "Nihilist" Miss Sassulitch, at that time, certainly was not. Her whole ambition centred in the wish of passing her examination to qualify herself for a governess, which she did "with distinction."

Netchaieff's democratic connections having been denounced by a traitor, whom he thereupon slew, the school-girl of seventeen, who had known his sister, and him through her, was thrown into prison as one "suspected" of conspiracy. There was not a shadow of proof against her. No accusation was even formulated against her. Nevertheless she was kept, for two long years, in the Czar's Bastille—an eternity of torture for a captive uncertain of her fate. These were the words which her counsel, Mr. Alexandroff, addressed to the jury, when, later on, she was tried for an attempt upon Trepoff, one of the most hated tools of despotic profligacy:—

"The time between the eighteenth and the twentieth year—these are the years of youth when childhood ceases; when impressions lasting for life are most powerful; when life itself appears yet spotless and pure. For the maiden it is the most beautiful time—the time of budding love—the time when the girl rises to the fuller consciousness of womanhood—the time of fanciful reverie and enthusiasm—the time to which, in later days, as a mother and a matron, her thoughts will yet fondly turn. Gentlemen of the jury! you know in the company of what friends Vjera Sassulitch had to pass her best years. The walls of a casemate were her companions. For two years she saw neither mother, nor relations, nor friends. Sometimes she heard that her mother had come and had given a message of greeting. That was all she was allowed to learn. Locked up without occupation within the walls of a prison!... Everything human concentrated in the single person of the turnkey who brings the food!... The monotonousness only broken, now and then, by the call of the sentinel, who, peering through the window bars, asks,—'Prisoner, have you not done any harm to yourself?' or by the rattling of the locks and door-bolts, the clack of guns shouldered or grounded, or the dreary striking of the hour in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.... Far, far away from everything human!... Nothing there to nourish the feelings of friendship and love; nothing but the sympathy created by the knowledge that, to the right and to the left, there are fellow-sufferers passing their wretched days in the same way.... Thus it was that, in the depth of her solitude, there arose, in Vjera Sassulitch, such warm-hearted sympathy for every State prisoner that every political convict sufferer became for her a spiritual comrade in her recollections, to whom she assigned a place in the experience and the impressions of her past life."

During the two years that Vjera was kept in dungeons under a mere suspicion, she was twice only subjected to a secret inquiry—"judicial," if that is a word applicable to these dread Inquisition procedures. At last she feared she was forgotten. Nothing whatever having come out against her, she was finally set free, and went back to her heart-broken mother, only to be suddenly re-arrested ten days afterwards! For a moment, in spite of a two years' bitter experience, she childishly thought there was some mistake. But the horrible truth of her situation soon broke upon her. One morning she was seized in prison, and, without being allowed to take even a change of dress, or a mantle, transported by gendarmes to a distant province by way of banishment. One of these gendarmes threw his own fur over her shivering shoulders, or else she might have perished on the road.

I will not go here through the whole "infernal circle" of her sufferings and involuntary migrations, which I have elsewhere described more fully. I will not relate how she was "moved on" from one place to the other; the only variety in her treatment consisting of an occasional return to prison. Eleven years had thus altogether elapsed when at last, in those vast dominions of the Czar, and amidst more thrilling events which began to crowd upon public attention, she seemed to be really forgotten. In this way she managed clandestinely to go back to the capital, whence again she started for Pensa. It was there that, by chance, she learnt from the Novoje Vremja ("New Times,") the infamous treatment of Bogoljuboff, a political prisoner, by the chief of the police at St. Petersburg, the vile and universally despised Trepoff, the personal, intimate, and pampered darling of Alexander II.

The flogging practices of this tyrannic head of the "Third Section" are still in every one's recollection. In referring to the knouting applied to Bogoljuboff, Vjera Sassulitch's counsel gave the following description:—

"The sufferer whose human dignity is to be insulted, knows not why he is to be punished. He thinks indignation will lend him strength to resist those who throw themselves upon him. But he is grasped by the iron grip of jailers' hands; he is dragged down; and in the midst of the regular counting of the strokes by the leader of the execution, a deep groan is heard—a groan not arising from mere physical pain, but from the soul's grief of a down-trodden, outraged man. At last, silence reigned again. The sacred act was accomplished!"

It was the brooding over such disgrace and affront to which a political prisoner had been subjected in the very capital by an official whose department is under the Czar's direct control that pressed the weapon of revenge into the hands of a tender woman—not so much for her own past miseries as for those of a still suffering fellow-man.

Trepoff had been attacked by Vjera Sassulitch in his own Cabinet, in the very midst of his minions. The jury which tried her was composed almost exclusively of Aulic Councillors and such-like titled dignitaries. Prince Gortschakoff sat among the audience; so did the pick and flower of the upper classes of St. Petersburg. Who could doubt, in presence of the open avowal of the accused, that the verdict would be "Guilty?"

Strange to say, even among the officially faultless remarks of the Public Prosecutor there were some curious admissions. "I, for my part," Mr. Kessel said, "fully believe the statements made by Vjera Sassulitch. I believe that facts appeared to her in the light in which they have been placed here; and I am ready to accept the feelings of Vjera Sassulitch as facts. The Court, however, is bound to measure these feelings, as soon as they are converted into deeds, by the standard of the law." Through the summing up of the Judge there ran a strong vein of interpretations favourable to the accused. "An accused person," he remarked, "could certainly not be looked upon as an infallible commentator on the event with which he or she was connected. At the same time it had to be noted that criminals were to be divided into two groups: those who are led by selfish impulses, and who therefore, in the majority of cases, try to mask the truth by lying statements; and those who commit an act from no motive of personal profit, and who entertain no wish to hide anything of the deed they have done. You, gentlemen of the jury, are in a position to judge how far the statements of Vjera Sassulitch merit your confidence, and to which type of transgressors she most nearly comes up."

This was a clear hint to any intelligent jury; and the jury of Aulic Councillors were intelligent men. Going over all the details of the case, the Judge made a great many more remarks in the same spirit. The audience, who had frequently cheered the eloquence of counsel to such an extent that the President of the Tribunal had to warn them, were on the tip-toe of expectation. When the Foreman brought in the verdict: "No; she is not guilty!" the Hall of Justice—for justice had for once been done—rang with enthusiastic applause. Vjera Sassulitch was borne away in triumph.

In the streets, however,—and here we come once more upon all the dark and terrible ways of Autocracy,—there ensued a fearful scene. An attack was made upon the coach in which Vjera Sassulitch was to be carried home—apparently with the object of getting her once more into police clutches. There was a clash of swords and a confused tumult. Gensdarmes and police broke in upon the mass of people, who wished to protect her. Shots were fired. A nobleman and relation of Vjera, Grigori Sidorazki, lay dead in the street. A lady also, Miss Anna Rafailnowna, a medical student, writhed on the ground, wounded. The victim of so much prolonged persecution had herself mysteriously disappeared. Afterwards, an order for her re-arrest, marked "No. 16," and dated from the Secret Department of the Town, came to light—evidently through information given by an affiliate of the Revolutionary Committee within the police administration itself. This occult connection of sundry officials with the leaders of the Democratic or Nihilist Conspiracy explains why Government should so often have been hampered in its efforts to suppress that organization.

The verdict of "not guilty," in the case of Vjera Sassulitch, has been followed by several similar ones—a strong proof of the sympathy felt among the town populations, at least, with the aims of the revolutionists. Franz von Holtzendorff, a well-known legal authority in Germany, wrote on the case above detailed:—"Far more significant than the verdict of the jury is the fact that that verdict, in spite of its contrast to the existing law, has received the approval, as it appears, of the whole Russian press, of the whole of the upper classes, and even of the circles of Russian legists. I have had personal occasion to convince myself that prominent officials of the Russian Empire gave their applause to that verdict." Again, Dr. Holtzendorff said:—

"In Russia, the feelings of right and justice, which are systematically and artificially kept down and repressed, and which have no outlet in public life, concentrate themselves with their full weight in the verdict of a jury. That which the press had no liberty of saying during long years, is given vent to in the debates of a Court of Justice. An accusation is raised on account of a deed which, though punishable as a crime in itself, has been produced and nurtured by a system of administrative arbitrariness and gross ill-treatment that stands morally deep below the deed in question—a system of corruption which cannot be attacked legally, nay, which enjoys all the honours the State can award. And who can help it if an injustice committed day after day, in the name of the State, without any expiation, weighs more heavily upon the public conscience than the act of a single person who, boldly risking his or her own life, rises with a feeling of the deepest indignation against so rotten a system of Government? It is but too natural, this wrathful utterance of the popular voice, when it declares that a high official, who, trusting in the practical approval of the Imperial favour, ordains corporal punishment according to his arbitrary caprice against defenceless prisoners, is guilty of a greater offence than he who feels driven, by a passionate notion of justice, to constitute himself, of his own free will, an avenger of the public conscience.... If, in a State afflicted with political sickness, the institution of the jury had fallen so deep as to work with the mechanical certainty of a military court, and to heed nothing but the points of view of jurisprudence, without being touched by the current of moral aspirations, thus merely registering, with Byzantine obedience, the paragraphs of a code of law: such a phenomenon—keeping, as it would, the Government in a dangerous error as regards public life—would be far more reprehensible than that verdict of 'not guilty' by which a whole system of Government was practically condemned."

The Russian Government system Herr von Holtzendorff, who personally belongs to a very moderate political party, brands as "a system of arbitrary police ordinances, and of the virtual sovereignty of the Adjutants-General of the Czar—a system of administrative deportations, of despotic arrestations, of press-gagging—a swashbuckler's government." Another German writer of some distinction, Dr. Henry Jaques, observes—

"Where an absolutist monarch rules in arbitrary manner, without any limits to his power, the jury becomes the only representative organ of a people utterly bereft of all political rights. In such a case, a jury is indeed entitled to speak, before all, the language of the people, the language of its aspirations towards freedom, which must be heard before everything else, if the nation is to acquire its true rights. Even as, in the Iliad, the orphaned Andromache says to the parting Hector: 'Thou art now father, brother, and dear mother to me!' so the Russian people may say to its jury: 'You are now legislators, judges, and the source of mercy at one and the same time to me! In you there reposes the One and All of my political hopes, of my political rights!"

Noble words, but vain hope! First of all, it is not correct to say that Vjera Sassulitch had been judged by a jury under a political charge. For political crimes, or accusations, no jury has ever existed under Alexander II. Vjera Sassulitch was charged with what Government chose to consider a common crime; hence only she was brought before a jury. For political offenders, or what Government chooses to regard as political offenders, packed tribunals have always been assigned. Happily, Government overreached itself in the case of Vjera Sassulitch, feeling too secure in the loyalty of its own Aulic Councillors.

Secondly, no sooner had the trial resulted in a verdict of "not guilty," than Count Pahlen, the Minister of Justice, who thought the jury were, of course, quite a safe one, was dismissed. Thirdly, an ukase went forth, withdrawing from the cognizance of juries even cases of "common crime," when such crime was directed against one of the Czar's officials. Fourthly, fresh regulations were framed for a change of the jury system, as well as for the discipline of lawyers acting for the defence. Fifthly, in the teeth of the verdict given in favour of Vjera Sassulitch, a fresh trial was ordered, to be held in a country town, at Novgorod, as soon as she could be recaptured. Finally, Alexander the Liberal, seeing that all ordinary procedures were of no avail, instituted a state of siege and drum-head law for political offenders over a large portion of his Empire.

These are the desperate doings of a despotism maddened by an ever-active host of enemies. It is usually the beginning of the end.

VIII.

If any more proofs were wanted of the "benevolent" character of the Government of Alexander II., they might be found in the increase, year by year, of the deportations to Siberia. They are reckoned to be now four or five times more numerous than under the galling system of Nicholas. Political banishments have enormously augmented under his successor. So has the number of the prescribed loose and vagabond class of ordinary criminals, or suspects, who are frequently whisked off to Siberia—for the sake of clearing "Society," as it is called—when the criminals often become mixed up with the political exiles in an indistinguishable mass. This is the very refinement of torture, applied by the agents of a brutal despotism against men generously striving for a reform of the State and of society.

The arbitrary deportations are decreed by the "Third Section," or Secret Police, which is under the Emperor's personal direction. Formerly, this dreaded office had the power of administering corporal punishment, in secret, to persons of the upper classes, male or female. At the Sassulitch trial, the counsel for the defence made a dark allusion to this practice, which created a deep impression in Court. It was a reference to a whipping-machine once in use, and of which some of those present—ladies, as well as gentlemen—may have had personal experience. A correspondent has given the following description:—The suspected person, who could not be brought to trial, but whom it was intended to castigate, would be invited to call at the Office of the Secret Police. After a few moments' conversation with the dread functionary, the floor would suddenly sink beneath the visitor's feet, and he would find himself suspended by the waist, all that part of the body below it being under the floor, and concealed from view. Then invisible hands and equally invisible rods would rapidly perform their duty—the trap-door would rise again—and the visitor would be bowed out with great courtesy, and go home, carrying with him substantial marks to remind him of his interview.

Though this more than Oriental custom has been abolished, enough remains of barbarity to explain why successive chiefs of the hated police Hermandad—Trepoff, Mesentzoff, and Drentelen—should have been the mark of the bullet of popular revenge. A Russian writer says:—

"A history of the secret doings, of all the horrors and crimes perpetrated by this disgraceful institution, would fill up many volumes, before the contents of which the most sensational novels would appear tame and shallow. There is scarcely any sphere of public or private life which is exempted from the irresponsible control of this Inquisition of the nineteenth century. The verdict of a Court has no value whatever for the Third Section. Not only acquitted political offenders are as a rule transported, administratively, to some distant town of the Empire, but even the judges themselves, when they are considered to have passed too lenient a verdict, are liable to be forced into resigning their office, and to be then exiled in company with the very prisoners who had stood before them!"

Lest this description should appear to be overdrawn, I may quote from the letter of the St. Petersburg correspondent of an English journal, which is certainly not unfavourable to the Government of Alexander II. The letter was written after the recent proclamation of a state of siege. And the writer says:—

"As proofs and instances, not so much of martial law as of the repressive measures adopted (in many cases by ordinary administrative agency, without the machinery of martial law), I may mention that at the present time, as I am well informed, more than 600 persons of the privileged classes are under arrest, to be deported to Siberia without trial. In one of the temporary governor-generalships in the south of the Empire (Odessa), sixty privileged persons have been already sent to Siberia without trial, and 200 persons of this class are under arrest to be judged. So great is the number of persons of this category to be escorted that a practical difficulty is said to have arisen in connection with their deportation. A noble, or privileged person, who has not been judicially sentenced, when sent to Siberia by 'administrative process' (as it is called, i.e., by the orders of the Third Section, or Secret Police), must be escorted by two gensdarmes, it being against the laws to manacle a privileged person who is uncondemned. It appears that there are not gensdarmes enough thus to escort the number of persons to be deported, and the Ministry of Secret Police has, I understand, proposed to get rid of this difficulty by sending the privileged persons fettered like ordinary criminals.... The Third Section, or Secret Police, which is in its proceedings essentially extra leges, claims to act independently of any other department of the Empire. This institution, which lays hold of suspected persons, whether justly or unjustly suspected, and consigns them to Siberia at its pleasure, savours more of Asiatic lawlessness than of enlightened European rule, such as it must be the desire of all in authority to see established throughout the Empire.... I have myself met with respectable, honourable men, who have been arrested and imprisoned, in some cases for a few weeks, in other cases during months, followed by years of exile in Siberia, without any charge being brought against them; and it is the possibility of this recurring to them, or to others, that constitutes a Reign of Terror."

The above description is from the correspondent of the Daily News. Clearly it is a very pleasant position to be a "privileged person" in Russia. It marks its occupant, by preference, as a possible candidate for exile to Siberia; the more cultivated classes being essentially those which constitute the active element of political dissatisfaction.

Of the treatment of political exiles in Siberia, as it has been carried on for a long time past, I have before me a thrilling description from the pen of Mr. Robert Lemke, a German writer, who has visited the various penal establishments of Russia, with an official legitimation. He had been to Tobolsk; after which he had to make a long, dreary journey in a wretched car, until a high mountain arose before him. In its torn and craggy flank the mountain showed a colossal opening similar to the mouth of a burnt-out crater. Fetid vapours, which almost took away his breath, ascended from it.

Pressing the handkerchief upon his lips, Mr. Lemke entered the opening of the rock, when he found a large watch-house, with a picket of Cossacks. Having shown his papers of legitimation, he was conducted by a guide through a long, very dark, and narrow corridor, which, judging from its sloping descent, led down into some unknown depth. In spite of his good fur, the visitor felt extremely cold. After a walk of some ten minutes through the dense obscurity, the ground becoming more and more soft, a vague shimmer of light became observable. "We are in the mine!" said the guide, pointing with a significant gesture to the high iron cross-bars which closed the cavern before them.

The massive bars were covered with a thick rust. A watchman appeared, who unlocked the heavy iron gate. Entering a room of considerable extent, but which was scarcely a man's height, and which was dimly lit by an oil-lamp, the visitor asked, "Where are we?" "In the sleeping-room of the condemned! Formerly it was a productive gallery of the mine; now it serves as a shelter."

The visitor shuddered. This subterranean sepulchre, lit by neither sun, nor moon, was called a sleeping-room. Alcove-like cells were hewn into the rock; here, on a couch of damp, half-rotten straw, covered with a sackcloth, the unfortunate sufferers were to repose from the day's work. Over each cell a cramp-iron was fixed, wherewith to lock-up the prisoners like ferocious dogs. No door, no window anywhere.

Conducted through another passage, where a few lanterns were placed, and whose end was also barred by an iron gate, Mr. Lemke came to a large vault, partly lit. This was the mine. A deafening noise of pickaxes and hammers. There he saw some hundreds of wretched figures, with shaggy beards, sickly faces, reddened eyelids; clad in tatters, some of them barefoot, others in sandals, fettered with heavy foot-chains. No song, no whistling. Now and then they shyly looked at the visitor and his companion. The water dripped from the stones; the tatters of the convicts were thoroughly wet. One of them, a tall man, of suffering mien, laboured hard with gasping breath, but the strokes of his pickaxe were not heavy and firm enough to loosen the rock.

"Why are you here?" Mr. Lemke asked.

The convict looked confused, with an air almost of consternation, and silently continued his work.

"It is forbidden to the prisoners," said the inspector, "to speak of the cause of their banishment!"

Entombed alive; forbidden to say why!

"But who is the convict?" Mr. Lemke asked the guide, with low voice.

"It is Number 114!" the guide replied, laconically.

"This I see," answered the visitor; "but what are the man's antecedents? To what family does he belong?"

"He is a count," replied the guide; "a well-known conspirator. More, I regret to say, I cannot tell you about Number 114!"

The visitor felt as if he were stifled in the grave-like atmosphere—as if his chest were pressed in by a demoniacal nightmare. He hastily asked his guide to return with him to the upper world. Meeting there the commander of the military establishment, he was obligingly asked by that officer—

"Well, what impression did our penal establishment make upon you?"

Mr. Lemke stiffly bowing in silence, the officer seemed to take this as a kind of satisfied assent, and went on—

"Very industrious people, the men below; are they not?"

"But with what feelings," Mr. Lemke answered, "must these unfortunates look forward to the day of rest after the week's toil!"

"Rest!" said the officer; "convicts must always labour. There is no rest for them. They are condemned to perpetual forced labour; and he who once enters the mine never leaves it!"

"But this is barbarous!"

The officer shrugged his shoulders, and said, "The exiled work daily for twelve hours; on Sundays too. They must never pause. But, no; I am mistaken. Twice a year, though, rest is permitted to them—at Easter-time, and on the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor."

IX.

Can we wonder, when we see the ultra-Bulgarian atrocities practised in Russia, that "Terror for Terror!" should at last have become the parole of the men of the Revolutionary Committee?

I will not go over the harrowing details of the events of the last seven or eight months; they are still fresh in every one's remembrance. The only measures that could stay this destructive contest are systematically withheld by the Czar, who will not permit the slightest display of popular sentiments within the lawful domain of Representative Government. Many years ago a distinguished French writer described the Russian system as "a tyranny tempered by the dagger." Alexander, too, himself is fully aware of this tragic concatenation of events. He is even known to have often, in the very beginning of his reign, expressed a feeling of fear lest his own end should be a violent one, like that of so many of his predecessors. The attempts of Karakasoff and Berezowski have lately been repeated by Solovieff. Whilst strongly condemning the deed of the latter, even the Conservative Standard felt called upon, by the dangers of the situation at large, to make the following comments, which possess a lasting interest:—

"It would be well if this painful incident could be disposed of by a homily upon individual wickedness and individual perverseness. Unhappily, it is but too certain that not only the deed itself, but the peculiar circumstances attending it, are closely related with the existing condition of a considerable section of Russian society. We are obliged to add that this condition is closely connected, in turn, with the form of government and the methods of administration that prevail in that country.... In spite of the emancipation of the serfs from the condition of territorial slavery, the Russian people have made little visible progress in the acquisition of political freedom. The Czar is still an absolute Sovereign; his Ministers still remain responsible to no will but his, and their agents have to answer only to their superiors for the manner in which they exercise authority.... The sanguine youth of the nation, eager for a career, and burning for activity, finds itself debarred from any course of distinction save that of arms, or that official existence which too often places men in Russia in antagonism to their own countrymen.... The old method of government—of police supervision, of private espionage, of imprisonment, of exile, of political silence—has been tried, and the result is discontent and extensive conspiracy. We fear that even the confession of sensualistic atheism by Solovieff will not prevent his memory from being cherished by thousands of his countrymen. They will forget everything, save his desire to endow them with more freedom. Whatever his faults, they will consider that he perished in their cause, and what they will be most disposed to blame will be the unsteadiness of his hand and the uncertainty of his aim."

The Times also, whilst pleading for Solovieff's execution, acknowledged the fact of the sway of Czardom being rotten to the core, in the following words:—"It cannot be disputed that whole classes in Russia are penetrated almost to desperation with a sense of social oppression and wrong.... A social condition like this is the natural soil in which the brooding temperament which seeks a remedy in assassination is nourished."

When all the safety-valves are closed, Nature takes its revenge, and ever and anon occasions the inevitable outburst. Russia is at present under a state of siege from St. Petersburg to Moscow and Warsaw, from Kieff to Kharkoff and Odessa. An Army of Porters, about 15,000 strong, must watch the streets of the capital, day and night; and policemen are set to watch the watchers. Under General Gurko, the crosser of the Balkans, who is now Vice-Emperor, the last lines of legality have also been crossed—if the word "legality" applies at all to Russian institutions. He is invested with unlimited powers, in the place of the disheartened tyrant. The very Grand Dukes are under his orders. Arrests among officers of the army have been the immediate consequence of General Gurko's satrap rule. In several cases, compromising letters and prints were discovered, and executions both of officers, like Lieutenant Dubrovin, and of privates, have followed. The gallows are in permanent activity. But perhaps the most significant feature—and a promising one too—is the order issued, under court-martial law, that in all the barracks a list of the soldiers' arms is to be drawn up, and to be handed over to the police! This is the strongest sign of a suspicion against the army itself; and on the army the whole power of Czardom reposes.

When we hear of the arrest of a Senator, of a Director of the Imperial Bank, of Professors, of the son of the Chancellor of the dreaded "Third Section," of the wife of the procurator of a Military Court, of the nephew of the Chief of the Secret Police, and many other such cases, we are driven to the conclusion that, in spite of its furious acts of repression, the autocratic system has become untenable—that it must sooner or later fall. Like the Roman Emperor, Alexander II. might be glad if revolt had but a single neck. But is it possible for him to imagine that there exists but one party of malcontents? Do not the very arrests just mentioned belie such an assertion?

Conspirators are laid hold of by the Czar's sbirri together with men who would not think of armed resistance. Despotism is frightened, in fact, by the very shadows on the wall. Even the Slavophil and Panslavist parties—still the ready instruments of aggressive policy—have both become imbued with Constitutional ideas that look like sacrilege in the eyes of the Pope-Czar. The revolutionists of Land and Liberty ("Zemlja i Wolja"); the Socialist Jacobins who follow the doctrines of the Tocsin ("Nabat"); the Nihilists, properly speaking; and the moderate Constitutionalists, are all alike the enemies of the present form of Government. In some districts the peasantry have risen; and, remarkable to say, the first troop of Cossacks that was led against the insurgents, refused to fight them. These are portents whose gravity cannot be mistaken.

Ten years ago, when the Napoleonic Empire still stood erect, I said, in an article on "The Condition of France," in the Fortnightly Review:—

"A mighty change is undoubtedly hovering in the air. There may be short and sharp shocks and counter-shocks for a little while; but, unless all signs deceive, the great issue cannot be long delayed. The calmest observer is unable to deny the significance of the electrical flashes occasionally shooting now across the atmosphere. It is as if words of doom were traced in lurid streaks, breaking here and there through the darkened sky. We are strongly reminded of the similar incidents which marked the summer of 1868 in Spain. Those incidents were then scarcely understood abroad; yet they meant the subsequent great event of September. Even so there are now signs and portents in France—only fraught with a meaning for Europe at large."