dencies favourable to the dislocation and break-up of the old state of things in Russia, and the foundation of a new order upon the principles of right reason. The two following paragraphs, which I quote from the excellent paper already alluded to, will give you fuller explanations :-

Let us now put the question, What does Nihilism actually represent, if we take it not as a system but as a movement? There can be no hesitation in replying, that it is the leaven of progressive evolution in Russia. The peculiar soubriquet affixed to it five years ago is now a little ridiculous; because there is no man in Russian society, possessing more or less liberal tendencies, in whose mind some of the so-called Nihilistic principles are not also found existing. Nor can it be otherwise. All progress, whether in Russian society or any other, depends upon the emancipation of minds through the influence of positive conceptions. Nihilistic doctrines, in spite of their inconsistencies and their alloy of communistic idealism, contain a large proportion of sound tendencies, among which the first place must be given to the cardinal principle of objective investigation. They contain, also, a deep and significant feeling as to social duties, without which no society can improve. Russia is now a specimen of a country in which individualism does not and cannot predominate. Peasants and landed proprietors, merchants and workmen, the administration, and even the Emperor himself,--everybody understands what constitutes the social element of progress, and in this sense they are all socialists. Who is there in Russia opposed to the sound and popular movement of mutual solidarity? Only the so-called aristocratic party, the landlords, who are the champions of ultraindividualism. Look upon modern Russian society attentively, and you will certainly arrive at the conclusion, that you have before you the most democratic people in Europe, a people to whom the much-hated Socialism does not appear either strange or odious. Therefore, the animosity against the Nihilists would be quite absurd if it were to express itself in the same manner

as heretofore. I believe that this name, as a mark of reproach, can be applied only to those young men and women who fell into an absolute negation of everything that constitutes Russian social life, and preached an unlimited communism and a general levelling. Such types are certainly possible, and may exist among Russian ultra-Radicals, but their propaganda represents nothing more than a mere idiosyncrasy. Adherents of this sect are further characterized by their arrogance towards European science and civilisation. When they go abroad, all is bad and worth nothing in their eyes; the only valuable thing in the world is the novel of M. Chernuïshevski; they have been abundantly ridiculed in Russian literature, and now it is time to leave them alone. Any further diatribes against Nihilists would only be manifestations of personal rancour.

. . . A country like Russia, in which all the elements of social life are actively at work, and evidently in a progressive state, cannot be governed by nothing, cannot remain much the same,' as has been affirmed. The people may be ignorant, their self-reliance small, liberty in its germ, the administration badly organized, and the Government inconsistent or weak; but if you see, on the whole, a real improvement without any serious retrograde step, you must accept for this progress the laws of social evolution-laws which are everywhere manifested in the world quite independently of any given political form of Government or any system of administration. These social laws dwell in the collective mind of society, and are measured by the general state of its intellectual conceptions. If the Western journalists and politicians who speak of the warlike views and Panslavish pretension of Russia, could study its progressive movement, they would certainly arrive at truer conclusions. It cannot, indeed, be denied, that the Russian newspapers, and a large part of society, evince Slavish sympathies; but the tendencies of the rising generation are strongly opposed to any idea of warlike politics or spoliation. Such peaceful principles constitute a real guarantee, based as they are upon the entire

harmony of enlightened Russian youth with European civilisation, and an ardent worship of science and social studies. In the young men of the most advanced European countries, England, France, and Germany, we see the same philosophical, social, political, and moral tendencies, which manifest themselves in the Russian rising generation; even all the peculiarities of Nihilism may be recognised in the intellectual movement of Paris, London, Berlin, and Heidelberg, which gave me the right to say, at the beginning of this article, that Russian Nihilism possesses a serious significance for the whole of the civilized world. best theorems are deeply rooted in the minds of the rising generation of Russia, and only need to be re-organized upon a complete and positive system, to become sound principles, in which Europe may find a perpetual pledge against all the anticivilized tendencies of the Russian Colossus."

Its

I recommend these observations to all those who interest themselves in the future of Russia; and it is the future rather than the present of Russia that is important to us. Her contact with us in Asia is a thing not of to-morrow or next day, but it is a thing to which we must look forward as extremely probable, and we must watch more carefully than we do what kind of power Russia is becoming, before we can form a right judgment as to the frame of mind in which we should anticipate that contact. To this subject, however, I will return in my next lecture.

TURKEY.-The atrocious assassination of the Prince of Servia which shocked us all in the summer, has happily not been followed by any disturbances in that country. His successor being a mere boy, the whole real power is vested in the hands of a regency, and it would seem that the persons who compose that regency are not in a hurry to plunge Servia into adventures. The change, in fact, between the autumn of 1868 and that of 1867, in the policy of Belgrade, is very marked and satisfactory.

I wish I could say the same of Roumania, but there things are in a very different position; in no way are they going well. One day it is the persecution of the Jews which rouses the indignation of all civilized men, another day it is the infliction of judicial torture. The international duties of Prince Charles's Government are no better performed than its internal ones, and Baron Beust did not use at all too strong an expression when he spoke of the Principalities as a vast arsenal. What is worse, they are an arsenal under no efficient superintendence, in which a parcel of schoolboys are amusing themselves by sky-larking. About all the proceedings of Bucharest there is what our High Church friends would call a "note" of frivolity, not to say of scampishness, which is made all the more amusing from the fact that the central figure, round which the whole crazy business goes on, is a Prince of the grave and intensely respectable house of Hohenzollern. The root of the whole mischief is simply this, that nobody is fully responsible for what happens in Roumania. Although really quite separate from Turkey, it is nominally still a part of that Empire, and thus the authority of the Suzerain actually becomes a barrier to prevent the great Powers who disapprove of the intrigues that are going on, doing anything effective to stop them; while Russia, whose interest it is to keep up a perpetual witches' sabbath along the Lower Danube, is of course only too happy to afford M. Bratiano and his friends every help in its power. One can hardly blame the Czar's Government. To it the extension of Russian power all over those regions must seem a mere matter of manifest destiny. To be sure, the Roumans do not speak a Slavonian dialect, but they are cut off by many a league from the nearest population which speaks a dialect derived from the Latin, and Russia looks upon them as destined to be a mere enclave in a Sclavonic empire, which shall extend from Montenegro to the Black Sea and the Bosporus. All that I say is perfectly natural, but it is equally natural that Europe, whom this little arrangement cannot be expected to

suit, should do the one thing which she can do,-insist on Roumania becoming nominally as well as virtually independent, and then hold her tight to her international obligations. We should not then hear of bands being organized in the most open manner for the invasion of Bulgaria, armed and provisioned in broad daylight at Giurgevo, and sent with a blessing across the Danube. First to make Europe see that this is its interest, and then to make the Porte take the same view, is not so easy. No nation willingly parts with any kind of rights over territory, and we fear that Turkey will be no exception.

The number of the bands which have crossed from the north to the south bank of the Danube, has been probably very much exaggerated, but enough has been done to make the Turkish Government uneasy, and to keep its troops rushing up and down the river to intercept invaders, real or imaginary. Of course the object of these invaders has been to revolutionize Bulgaria, by which I mean not merely the province usually so called, but the whole vast region lying to the north and south of the Balkan, and extending from the Danube to the Sea of Marmora. It is doubtful, however, whether they will find this a very easy task. Of all the subject races, the Bulgarians are least inimical to the authority of the Sultan. It is more than probable that if their very moderate and reasonable demands were complied with, they would be a strong bulwark to the Empire.

I quote the following from a pamphlet by M. Coprichtanski, published in French at Constantinople :-"The state of things in which we are plunged is strange and intolerable. We have got rid of our old Greek masters in many places, but up to this hour they are our legal, although illegitimate, sovereigns. A word can throw us back into their power, and give us up to their vengeance; we live between two dreads-that of a past which we know too well, and that of a future which we do not know at all. We feel ourselves the object of the hatred of one set of people, and the appetite of another set.