ses would--give the power of voting to
illiterate and ignorant men, who would simply be tools in the hands of
the designing and ambitious; but the peoples of the great towns, St.
Petersburg, Moskow, Kieff, Odessa, and others should be permitted to
send representatives--men of their own choice--to the provincial
councils, which should be strengthened and given a real, instead of a
nominal, voice in the control of affairs.

"That was all I and thousands like me ever wished for in the present,
but it would have been the first step towards a constitution which the
empire, when the people become fit for it, might enjoy. That dream is
over. These men, by their wild violence, have thrown back the reforms
for half a century at least. They have driven the Czar to war against
them; they have strengthened the hands of the men who will use their
acts as an excuse for the extremest measures of repression; they have
ranged on the other side all the moderate men like myself, who, though
desirous of constitutional changes, shrink with horror from a revolution
heralded by deeds of bloodshed and murder."

"I quite agree with you," Godfrey said warmly. "Men must be mad who
could counsel such abominable plans. The French Revolution was terrible,
although it began peacefully, and was at first supported by all the best
spirits of France; but at last it became a hideous butchery. But here in
Russia it seems to me that it would be infinitely worse, for it is only
in the towns that there are men with any education; and if it began with
the murder of the Czar, what would it grow to?"

"What, indeed!" Ivan Petrovytch repeated. "And yet, like the French
Revolution, the pioneers of this movement were earnest and thoughtful
men, with noble dreams for the regeneration of Russia."

"But how did it begin?"

"It may be said to have started about 1860. The emancipation of the
serfs produced a sort of fever. Every one looked for change, but it was
in the universities, the seminaries, and among the younger professional
men that it first began. Prohibited works of all kinds, especially those
of European socialists, were, in spite of every precaution at the
frontier, introduced and widely circulated. Socialistic ideas made
tremendous progress among the class I speak of, and these, by writing,
by the circulation of prohibited papers, and so on, carried on a sort of
crusade against the government, and indeed against all governments,
carrying their ideas o