finest sentence in his writings, certainly the one which best indicates the essential feeling of his soul as he regarded human misery and ignorance, occurs in his description of one of the fathers of Solomon's House. "His countenance," he says, "was as the countenance of one who pities men."

But, it may still be asked, how was it that a man of such large wisdom, with a soul really of such pervasive beneficence, was so comparatively weak and pliant in his life? This question touches his mind no less than his character; and it must be said that, both in the action of his mind and the actions of his life, there is observable a lack both of emotional and moral intensity. He is never impassioned, never borne away by an overmastering feeling or purpose. There is no rush of ideas and passions in his writings, no direct contact and close hug of thought and thing. Serenity, not speed, is his characteristic. Majestic as is the movement of his intellect, and far-reaching its glance, it still includes, adjusts, feels into the objects it contemplates, rather than darts at them like Shakespeare's or pierces them like Chaucer's. And this intelligence, so wise and so worldly wise, so broad, bright, confident, and calm, with the moral element pervading it as an element of insight rather than as a motive of action, - this was the instrument on which he equally relied to advance learning and to advance Bacon. As a practical politician, he felt assured of his power to comprehend as a whole, and nicely to discern the separate parts, of the most complicated matter which pressed for judgment and for volition. Exercising insight and foresight on a multitude of facts and contingencies all present to his mind at once, he aimed to evoke order from confusion, to read events in their principles, to seize the salient point which properly determines the judgment, and then act decisively for his purpose, safely for his reputation and fortune. Marvellous as this process of intelligence is, it is liable both to corrupt and mislead unless the moral

sentiment is strong and controlling. The man transforms himself into a sort of earthly providence, and by intelligence is emancipated from strict integrity. But the intellectual eye, though capable, like Bacon's, of being dilated at will, is no substitute for conscience, and no device has ever yet been invented which would do away with the usefulness of simple honesty and blind moral instinct. In the most comprehensive view in politics something is sure to be left out, and that something is apt to vitiate the sagacity of the whole combination.

Indeed, there is such a thing as being over wise in dealing with practical affairs, and the defect of Bacon's intellect is seen the moment we compare it with an intellect like that of Luther. Bacon, with his serene superiority to impulse, and his power of giving his mind at pleasure its close compactness and fan-like spread, could hardly have failed to feel for Luther that compassionate contempt with which men possessing many ideas survey men who are possessed by one; yet it is certain that Luther never could have got entangled in Bacon's errors, for his habit was to cut knots which Bacon labored to untie. Men of Luther's stamp never aim to be wise by reach but by intensity of intelligence. They catch a vivid glimpse of some awful spiritual fact, in whose light the world dwindles and pales, and then follow its inspiration headlong, paying no heed to the insinuating whispers of prudence, and crashing through the glassy expediencies which obstruct their path. Such natures, in the short run, are the most visionary; in the long run, the most practical. Bacon has been praised by the most pertinacious revilers of his character for his indifference to the metaphysical and theological controversies which raged around him. They do not seem to see that this indifference came from his deficiency in those intense moral and religious feelings out of which the controversies arose. It would have been better for himself had he been more of a fanatic, for such a

ganda gathers all its strength to aid the Czar's government in making another push at the East, and when the Muscovite armies, as a preparatory move, have taken possession of the Khanates of Tartary, thus nearing the British possessions of India, the traditional policy of Russia, as exhibited in her ancient history, acquires a peculiar importance.

Current events are often the outcome of deep-rooted tendencies. In the case of Russia, everybody talks fluently of her "traditional policy"; yet how few are there who have even a faint knowledge of the political and social conditions through which that empire has passed during and after the Middle Ages! There is a wellnigh general, but withal fallacious, belief that Russia is "a young state," in the prime of life, whose political organization dates only from the last century. Hence those comparisons with the youthful Transatlantic Republic, arising out of a few accidental, and no doubt transitory, similarities, with omission of the deep and characteristic diversities.

It is no exaggeration to say that even in England, which is the rival Asiatic power with Russia, one might as well ask for a general knowledge of what the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan did a thousand years ago as for an acquaintance with ancient Muscovite history. As the existence of the human race is recorded to have had its origin with "Adam," so Russian existence is often thought to have begun with a certain "Peter." As to what occurred in the fabulous times before the appearance of that historical Czar scarcely any one cares to inquire. Ere the "Shipwright of Saardam" connected his empire with Western civilization, Russia is usually assumed to have been a terra incognita to Europe. Since his time only

SO

er in the East.

Yet, in what a different light would "youthful" Russia be regarded, were it kept in mind that, centuries before Czar Peter, nay, at the very epoch when Alfred the Great founded the power of the English realm, — the ancient Russian Grand-Princes had already made themselves hateful to the Eastern world as barbarian sovereigns of the most grasping ambition. Opinions with respect to Muscovite "orthodox" policy would be altered, if the fact were remembered that, more than nine hundred years ago, when Russia was still sunk in paganism, the Danubian Principalities, the countries of the Black Sea, the Balkan, and the Bosphorus, and the gates of Constantinople itself, were already the theatre of Russian invasion and attack! What would be thought of the "religious mission" the autocrats have attributed to themselves, were it remembered that, in those far-distant times, the name, not only of the heathen, but even of the GrecoCatholic 'Pŵs (Russian), was pronounced with feelings of terror within the walls of Greco-Catholic Byzance long before that city of world-wide importance had become the capital of the "Padishah and Caliphe of all the Mussulman believers"?

If we would keep to real historical truth, we must reverse many current notions and preconceived ideas. We must not seek in the so-called evidently forged “Testament of Peter I." for the text-book of Russian attempts at universal dominion, or for the first indices of Russian movements against Constantinople; this encroaching tendency must be traced ten centuries back!

In the ninth century, when the Russians still revered the idols of Perun and Yurru, while Constantinople was ruled by an orthodox imperator, their

Grand-Princes, as they were then called, made war against Constantinople, holding the savage doctrine that "Byzantium must become their capital because the Greeks were women and the Russians 'blood-men."

In the tenth century, when the Russian Grand-Prince had embraced the same faith to which the Byzantine Empire adhered, another pretext had to be framed for aggression. Constantinople was then to become the residence of the barbarian, “because it suits the dignity of the Russian monarch to receive baptism in the capital of Eastern Christendom."

In the eleventh century, another trifling occasion was eagerly caught at by Russia to make an attempt for the conquest of Constantinople with one. hundred thousand men. And when subsequently the Byzantine Emperors were relieved from further attacks on the part of Russia, it was only because she had become weakened by internal feuds and ultimately subjected to Mongol rule.

All this, we ought to note here, happened at a time when Russia was not yet so much of a Slavonian power as she at present is. Finnish and Tartaric populations occupied, in those early centuries, a larger area within the confines of the empire than they at present do. Superposed on those three great national divisions - the Fins, the Slavonians, and the Tartars - was a dynasty and a military aristocracy of Northern, Germanic descent, which probably came from Scandinavia, and which gave the empire it founded a name imported from its Northern home.

The Mongol invasion wiped out for several centuries the existence of a Russian Empire. On the revival of the latter a spark of the old ambition reappears. In the fifteenth century the Muscovite autocrats return to the old designs. They were certainly unable then to try the chance of arms against the powerful Osmanlee, who in the mean time had planted the Crescent on the cupola of St. Sophia. But by and

by they sought to gain influence among the Greco-Slavonians of what now had become Turkey; basely asserting that at no distant date the Czar would be able to seize upon Constantinople as his inheritance, "because the marriage of Ivan Vassiljevitch with the niece of the last Paleologus gives to Russia a title to the possession of the Lower Empire.”

Time passed on; the Porte lost its military prestige, and the moment at last appeared propitious to revive ancient pretensions by force of arms. So Peter I. propounded the doctrine that Constantinople must become the capital of Russia because "the religious supremacy of the Czar is entitled to sway the whole East."

In the middle of the eighteenth century, French philosophy penetrated into the Cabinet of Catherine II. The grand seigneurs and roues of her voluptuous court coquetted with the ideas of liberalism and classic humanism; consequently the world had to be told that Constantinople ought to become a Muscovite fief "because the republics of ancient Hellas must be re-established under Russian protection."

But philosophy and classicism got out of fashion at St. Petersburg when the revolutionary storm thundered in France. The old dictum was therefore reproduced, that Stamboul cannot remain under Ottoman dominion "because the infidel Turk is a disgrace to the Holy City from whence Russia received the light of Christianity." This argument was strongly in favor with the late Czar Nicholas, who, however, had still another in reserve, — not this time of a religious character, — namely, that Russia had a right of succession to Turkey, “because the Turk is a sick man." Let us add that even this medical dictum is a traditional one, already in vogue at the time of Catherine II., who was indebted for it to the wit of Voltaire.

Thus the spirit of encroachment has, with certain compulsory interruptions, always existed in Russia since the formation of the Empire. Not in the

eighteenth, but in the ninth century, was the organization of Russia as a military monarchy first undertaken. Not under Peter I., but immediately after the introduction of the Rurik dynasty, do the pretensions of Russia to the domination over Constantinople appear. Not with the establishment of the "Holy Directing Synod," but in the very first year of the general spread of Christianity into Russia, under Vladimir, in 988, are the theocratical tendencies of the Russian sovereigns to be remarked. In the reigns of Oleg, Igor, Sviatoslaf, Vladimir, and Yaroslaf, Russia has already her prototypes of princely absolutism, military conquest, and ecclesiastical ambition. The later czars continued, they did not originate, this policy.

Nothing, consequently, can be more erroneous than to say that under Peter, son of Alexis, Russia for the first time emerged from a chaotic state into the proportions of a realm, and that since his time she has been continually developing her "juvenile vigor." History unfolds a view diametrically opposed to this theory. Russia is an old empire. And, unlike other European countries which have had their rise, growth, and decline, or transformation, she has for a thousand years oscillated between the existence as a military empire of menacing aspirations and a state of total political eclipse. She can hardly boast of a steady internal development. Warlike, aggressive despotism in one epoch, total prostration in another, have been her characteristics. In the mean while, through all these jerking changes, her people have unfortunately ever remained servile and uncultivated, her princes ever unduly ambitious. There were only two germs of freedom in Russia at the two farther ends of the Empire. We allude to the city of Novogorod, at one time a member of the German Hanseatic League, and to the city of Kiev. Both fell before the onslaught of czarism. There was no force in all the vast extent of the Empire to support the good cause of Novogorod; and it would seem as if the

abject spirit of slavery in so many millions of subjects had continually tended to produce a vertigo of ambition in the minds of the monarchs. Finding at home no impediment to their most extravagant wishes, they indulged in the wildest dreams of conquest of other nations. In this manner they brought forward schemes of universal dominion, and stretched out their hands — they, the barbarian chieftains! - towards the sceptre of Eastern Rome. But when they failed, the nations that had been wronged took a great revenge; and so Russia often sank to almost entire annihilation under the shock of foreign coalitions. In this way, exaggerated aspirations were followed by terrible catastrophes. But after a period of prostration, the insatiate spirit of conquest regularly reappeared; and this, we apprehend, will continue until Europe has succeeded in pushing the frontiers of civilization farther into Muscovy.

As the view above given of Russian history is not quite in accordance with the recognized notions, it may, perhaps, be as well to add an outline of the chief epochs with regard to the autocratic foreign policy of the grand-princes and

czars.

In the first century of its foundation, the Russian Empire treads the stage, so to speak, in full armor. From the disorder of a host of not very warlike tribes, the foreign-Germanic - dynasty of the Ruriks calls a realm into existence, ready armed for offence; and forthwith a despotism is developed, "born with teeth in its head." This earliest epoch dates from the ninth to the eleventh century. During it, the Rurik dynasty unites the Finnish and Slavonian tribes of what is now Northern and Central Russia into one empire, overthrows in the southeast the highly cultivated Tartar Kingdom of the Khazans,* who inhabited the countries

The history of the Khazan Kingdom, erroneously confounded with that of the Khanates of rude nomadic hordes, almost remains to be written. Although a Tartar (or Turkish steppe-tribe by origin, the Khazans of the ninth century turned their attention to Greek culture and refinement, and acted as