charges made by the university authori- of work was done by perfect gentlemen, ties were nevertheless too high. Exhibitions and scholarships were founded for their benefit; and the actors and actresses, singers and musicians, of the capital were expected, and indeed required, to give entertainments in aid of the poor students' fund, which it became so much the fashion to support that the poor student seemed at one time on the point of himself becoming fashionable. No political effect has in a direct manner been produced by the emancipation of the serfs, by the formation of local assemblies, or by the law reforms. Grave political consequences, on the other hand, have resulted from the all but abolition of the censorship, from the opening of the universities, and the lowering of university fees; perhaps also from the comparative disuse of that disgraceful but efficacious instrument of despotic power, the spy system. On this last point it is difficult to get authentic information. Plenty of spies, no doubt, were employed at home and abroad during the reign of Alexander II. London, at the time of the Universal Exhibition of 1862, was freely visited by Russian agents bent upon following the movements of the late Alexander Herzen and his friends. But the status of the spy, his wages, and consequently his activity, had fallen. So, at least, I was informed when, some years later than the period just referred to, I returned once more to Russia, and having become known to the Russian authorities in connection with the Polish insurrection of 1863 (of which, however, I had only been an impartial though not indifferent observer, in the character of correspondent of the Times), I was honored with the special attention of some members of the secret police. Formerly they were a terror to every one; now they no longer inspired the least fear. A servant at Klee's Hotel, in St. Petersburg, where I was staying, informed me that the room next mine had been taken by a police agent, who watched my going out and my coming in, and made notes as to the friends who visited me. One of the waiters told me that there was another spy who concealed himself under the principal staircase, and followed me whenever I went out. He spoke of the man with more pity than contempt. "People of his class," he said, "are in a very sad position now, sir. I remember the day when that sort who dined at the table d'hôte, and ordered their red wine and their white wine and their champagne like the best in the land. Now they crouch under staircases, and are glad to get a glass of vodka." So relaxed was the police system in 1861 and 1862 that I remember in the former of these years an officer calling at a St. Petersburg café for the Kolokol—a journal which he knew the waiter would not bring him, and which he would not have dared in bravado to ask for but that everything at that time seemed to be permitted. The reaction which had set in since the withdrawal of the restrictions imposed by Nicholas was complete. Not only was the censorship no longer exercised with anything approaching rigor a negative change which had the effect of calling into existence journals innumerable, nearly all of an extreme liberal tendency-but police supervision was now so inadequately performed that secret printing-presses, all used for revolutionary purposes, could be established in the very heart of St. Petersburg. It was in 1861 and 1862 that the first numbers of the revolutionary print called Land and Liberty, and of another called Great Russia, were produced, and circulated from hand to hand, and that revolutionary proclamations were for the first time printed, and posted up at night on the walls of the public buildings. The prohibition enforced by the censorship of Nicholas's time against all foreign books of a political and philosophical character had been removed with such success that volumes which no one out of Russia would consider dangerous, but which had really the effect of exciting and inflaming the inexperienced Russian mind, were introduced in large quantities. Buckle and Mill were much read in Russian translations. Mill on Liberty appeared in two versions, one of which was enriched by notes from the translator, who pointed out that Mill's notions on the subject of freedom were meagre, and not sufficiently advanced. Whether the custom-house officials had become more lax in the discharge of their duties, whether they had become more amenable to bribes, whether bribes were offered to them in larger sums, or whether the agents of the revolutionary movement now set agoing had become so numerous and so ingenious that it was impossible, with such an extended frontier as that of Russia, to prevent them from introducing whatever they pleased, certain it is, in any case, that Mr. Herzen's revolutionary journal, published in London-the before-mentioned Kolokol, or Bell, for which the officer at the café had jocosely called-used to find its way regularly in large numbers to St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and all the great centres. Its THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS ALEXANDROVITCH, THE HEIR-APPARENT. Strange stories were told of the means by which this sheet found its way to Russia, and of the correspondents-many of them undoubtedly high-placedwho furnished it with Russian political and official news. staff of writers and compositors was from time to time re-enforced by fugitives from Russia, and in one case by an escaped exile the well-known Bakounin, who made his way from his place of banishment in Siberia to the sea-coast, and there embarked on an American ship bound for Japan, whence in due time he reached, first New York, and afterward London. Like "pale death," the Kolokol entered equally the hut of the peasant who was to be stimulated to insurrection, and the palace of the Emperor who was to be frightened into concessions. Alexander II. was claimed as one of the "constant readers" of the revolutionary and incendiary print; and his ministers, finding this to be the case, are said on one occasion to have found it convenient to have a special copy printed at St. Petersburg, reproducing everything which the number of the Kolokol just arrived from London contained, with the exception of one obnoxious article, which was replaced by another of quite a different character. But the deception practiced upon the Emperor was reported to Mr. Herzen in London, and means were found to lay before his Majesty the incriminatory number as it had proceeded from the revolutionary printing-press. Mr. Herzen used to maintain that his journal, apart from any direct influence it might exercise in causing the introduction of reforms, was a wholesome terror to wrong-doers, and that it did good, moreover, by awakening his countrymen | to a sense of their position. That this was the primary object of its publication would seem to be indicated by its motto, "Vivos voco." Alexander Herzen had found it impossible to write in Russia. The censorship when, in 1848, Mr. Herzen quitted his native land, never to return to it, was unusually severe. Indeed, there were, as Mr. Herzen explained in the first book he published after leaving Russia, two censorships-the ordinary one, and another composed of "generals, engineers, artillery, staff and garrison officers, and two monks, the whole under the immediate superintendence of a Tartar prince." This formidable body of supervisors gave him to understand that nothing he might write would be allowed to find its way into print, "even though I dwelt on the advantages of a secret police and of absolutism, or on the utility of serfdom, corporal punishment, and the recruiting system." There was one merit in Mr. Herzen's journal: that though its tendency was toward liberalism of the most advanced kind, it stopped far short of what is now known as Nihilism-the word in Mr. Herzen's days had only just begun to be used-and that it asked for definite concessions. editor, indeed, proclaimed himself, when Its sity, were published in that paper, and in due time reached Russia, the censorship of the Foreign Office allowed them to pass unblackened and unmutilated, although they reflected severely on the conduct of a colleague, the Minister of Public Instruction. The system was, in fact, not working harmoniously. Each ministry, each department, each interest in the country, was acting for itself. There was a striking absence of general direction; and the band of revolutionists and Nihilists, as they at this time began to be called, felt like Punch in the popular play, who, when the devil has been killed, exclaims, "Thank God, we can now all do as we like!" the Emperor Alexander had been only a few years on the throne, tolerably satisfied with the march of events, and with the measure of liberty already accorded to the Russians. "Who, five years ago," he wrote, "would have dared to think that the settled right of possessing serfs, supported by the stick at home and by the bayonet abroad, would have been shaken? And who dares now to say that this will not be followed by the fall of the table of ranks, the secret police office, the arbitrary power of ministers, and a governmental system founded upon corporal punishment and the dread of superiors in office?" The Kolokol had undoubtedly the effect of fanning the flames of revolution. But there were enough revolutionary elements in Russia itself to cause a blaze; and however much the introduction of the Kolokol into that country may have increased the agitation, the whole evil was due to the violent oppression exercised by the Emperor Nicholas, and by the natural and perhaps inevitable reaction which follow-parent significance might have been real ed its cessation. Lit Among those liberals who did not deserve to be stigmatized as revolutionists the three great objects held in view were, (1) freedom of expression, (2) extension of education, (3) right of representation; and in the direction of these objects strides of seeming importance were made. Their ap had the pace been less rapid, and if persons working in good faith had not been aided in their efforts by others working in the worst faith possible. This applies in particular to the educational movement, which in both the capitals was taken in hand by enterprising persons working for the most part in associations, without any question of subventions, grants, or help of any kind from the government. In 1862 the general relaxation reached a point at which everything seemed to be giving way, and an ambassador of that time aptly remarked that "though the revolutionary torrent was not strong, the governmental dams were alarmingly weak." The censorship, mildly as it worked, was now openly rebelled against by the journalists. Each ministerial department had its own particular censor- Much discussion took place at the time ship. The journals received from abroad as to whether the Sunday schools estabwere taken charge of by the censorship lished in the barracks of St. Petersburg, attached to the Ministry of Foreign Af- in factories, and in various public buildfairs. Military journals were supervised ings were due to a sincere desire to inin the office of the Minister of War. struct the people, or to a firm determinaerary and political journals were attend- tion to instill into their breasts the prined to at the Ministry of the Interior. If ciples of revolution. I visited a great the editor of one of these sheets consid- number of these Sunday schools, and was ered that a given article had been unduly convinced that they had been started with mutilated, he appealed to the minister of a good purpose, though they were soon, his department. The minister in many in some measure at least, converted to a cases sided with the complaining editor. bad one. At the Military School, the Then, reprimanded for having marked out School of Artillery, and at almost all the what he might just as well have left in, the military establishments and barracks censor, humiliated and annoyed, would where soldiers were quartered, Sunday next time leave in what he knew perfect- classes were formed. The rooms were ly well he ought to have marked out. hung round with maps and plans; the officers acted as teachers, and the soldiers, who were very attentive, and showed a great desire for instruction, learned under their guidance reading, writing, arithmetic, and, if they showed any aptitude for it, geometrical drawing. Some of the The foreign journals were subjected, as has been said, to the censorship attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and once, when some letters from a correspondent of the Times at St. Petersburg, giving an account of disturbances at the univer officer-teachers were intimate friends of | under Alexander II. a collision between mine, and they were certainly animated soldiers and civilians, and the repression by a wish not only to educate their men, but to raise their general tone. This involved treating the soldier with a certain kind of respect, or at least of consideration, to which he was not accustomed; and the authorities came at last to the conclusion that the sympathy of the men was not valued by their chiefs in the in- | terest of the service alone, and that when they had finished their literary education, the books that would be given them to read would be works of a revolutionary character. The principal members of the civil administration, and in particular the police, had disapproved of these schools from the first. But the military authorities regarded them for a time with a certain favor; and they were certainly calculated to do good, if it be any advantage to the soldier and to the workman to be able to relieve the monotony of his life by a little reading and writing. They were condemned, however, by the high officials, and after being pronounced "hot-beds of revolution," were closed by superior order. of tumult by armed force. At St. Petersburg the students, finding that their fund had been suppressed, or at least that the work of administering it had been taken from their hands, that they had been deprived of the right of meeting, and that other lately acquired privileges were to be withdrawn, assembled in face of an order forbidding them to do anything of the kind. According to a story circulated at the time, the Governor-General of St. Petersburg telegraphed to the Emperor, who was in the Crimea, asking how the rebellious students were to be treated. "Treat them like father"-kak atets-was the reply; which the Governor-General interpreted as meaning "treat them like my father." It was quite certain that the Emperor Nicholas would have made short work of a students' insurrection, supposing for a moment that such a movement could have been ventured upon, conceived, or even dreamed of under his dreaded sway; so, treating the young men as the Emperor's father would have The disturbances which broke out in treated them, the Governor-General sent this year at the University of St. Peters-out infantry and a squadron of dragoons, burg, to be followed in subsequent years who, as the mutinous ones still refused to by disturbances of the same character, disperse, attacked them with bayonet and need not be dealt with at length. It had sword, wounding some, capturing others, occurred to persons in power, and espe- and putting the rest to flight. cially to a newly appointed Minister of Public Instruction, who had qualified himself for the post by long service in the navy, and who to assume its duties had resigned the command of the Russian squadron in the seas of Japan, that, like the Sunday schools, the universities were "hot-beds of revolution." It would have been considered very illiberal in those days to assert that it was useless, and might even be dangerous, to give crowds of very poor young men a university education; and when it occurred to the Japanese admiral that the government was at a great expense rearing a numerous brood of revolutionists, the notion was ridiculed, spurned, and condemned, though it must now be admitted that subsequent events, and subsequent law proceedings in connection with Nihilistic conspiracies, have shown that there was a certain amount of truth in it. The university disturbances of the end of 1861 and the beginning of 1862 at St. Petersburg and at Moscow were remarkable as bringing about for the first time VOL. LXVII.-No. 398.-13 In Moscow, where all the incidents which had taken place at the St. Petersburg University were up to a certain point faithfully reproduced, the climax was slightly different. The students were carrying in procession a statement of their complaints to the Governor-General of Moscow, when a number of police agents, disguised as workmen, appealed to the populace, and representing the students as enemies of the Czar," procured for them the severest ill-treatment at the hands of the genuine workmen and peasants who happened to be on the spot. 66 There was something typical in this affair; and any movement in Russia on the part of the educated classes, so little numerous, could be at once suppressed through the dangerous expedient of appealing in the name of the Emperor to the great mass of the peasantry. The universities having been closed by superior order, the professors, who, at St. Petersburg, were nearly all on the side of the students, established in that capital courses of lectures to which the students the sense given to the word fourteen years. ago by the late Prince Peter Dolgorouki. He was staying at Geneva, then as now the head-quarters of the Russian revolutionists working from abroad; and when I asked him what he knew about the at that time not very formidable sect of Nihilists, he replied that the Nihilists he had met with were of two kinds, "those who had nothing in their head, and those who had nothing in their pocket." This was a pleasant joke. But a poor student, alike without means and without a degree, would be very likely indeed to become the tool of richer and cleverer malcontents than himself. of the question caused a general fermentation, and awakened all sorts of aspirations among the great bulk of educated. Russians; while to the partially dispossessed proprietors it suggested, moreover, the idea of a moral compensation in the shape of political rights, which were formally and almost peremptorily demanded at the various assemblies of the nobility held at the end of 1861 and the beginning of 1862. and the public generally were admitted gratuitously. Disaffection, however, was seen in this well-intentioned conduct on the part of the professors. It looked like a protest against the action of the authorities in shutting up the universities. Unfortunately, too, the students and many of their friends of the extreme liberal party made a point of applauding in the lectures everything that could be converted into an attack, direct or indirect, against the government. A professor assured me that his audience had discovered and applauded in a lecture he had just delivered a number of allusions which | he had never intended. Some, however, allowed themselves to be betrayed into It has been said that the emancipation the imprudence of saying very sharp of the serfs has hitherto produced no dithings against the Russian system of gov-rect political effect. But the discussion ernment; and the end of the free lectures was that the lecture-rooms, like the universities, were closed, that several of the lecturers were reprimanded, and that at least one was sent to Siberia. The public showed its sympathy for the studentswhich was another name for antipathy toward the existing system of government-by attending the concerts, dramatic performances, and entertainments of all kinds that were now organized by intelligent managers "for the benefit of the poor students." Education was regarded by the Russian liberals of those days as a panacea for every ill; and if after the emancipation special magistrates, called "peace arbiters," were to be appointed to decide disputes between peasants and proprietors, if judges worthy of their position were to be named to administer the law under the new system of procedure-which involved, moreover, for the first time in Russia, the employment of barristersthen it was evident that the numbers of the educated class must be largely increased. If in Nicholas's time three hundred students at each university would, according to that sovereign's calculation, yield enough educated men for the service of the state, that number would, for the requirements not only of the state, but of the community, be quite insufficient now. But though students, rich or poor, who passed their examinations and adopted professions or entered the state service, In former days a ruined gentleman might have much to thank the university might be made a judge if he was a good for, the case would be different with stu- fellow, and could get the proprietors of dents who failed to pass, and had nothing his district to elect him to the office; for to fall back upon. These became Nihil- the right of electing their own judges. ists, or rather were already Nihilists, in | was one of the privileges conferred upon A few small proprietors who had already mortgaged their estates for twothirds of their value-an amount the government was always ready to lendand who had little or nothing to receive in the way of pecuniary compensation, lost everything by the emancipation, and found themselves occupying the unenviable and often dangerous position of “ruined gentlemen." "Know'st thou a murderer ?" asks Richard III. of his page, as one might ask in the present day for the address of a boot-maker or tailor. "I know a ruined gentleman," replies the sagacious boy, whose humble means match not his haughty tastes." That is evidently the man for the deed, and such men-not murderers, but ruined gentlemen-have been produced in considerable numbers by the working of the law of emancipation, which, impoverishing large proprietors, has reduced small ones to destitution. 66 |