years of
his reign French ceases to be a medium of literary expression, and
Russian prose and Russian verse acquire their own cadences. Yet
liberty is the life-blood of art; and liberty he could not grant. The
freedom of the Press was interdicted; liberty of speech forbidden, and
a strict censorship, exercised by the dullest of officials, stifled
literature. "How unfortunate is this Bonaparte!" a wit remarked when
Pichegru was found strangled on the floor of his dungeon, "all his
prisoners die on his hands." How unfortunate was the Czar Nicholas!
All his men of genius died by violent deaths. Lermontoff and Poushkine
fell in duels before antagonists who represented the _tchinovnik_
class. Rileyev died on the scaffold; Griboiedov was assassinated at
Teheran.

His foreign policy was a return to that of Catherine the Great--the
restoration of the Byzantine Empire. Making admirable use of the
Hellenic enthusiasm of Canning, he destroyed the Turkish fleet at
Navarino. Thus popular at home and abroad, regarded by the Liberals of
Europe as the restorer of Greek freedom, and by the Legitimists as a
stronger successor to Alexander, he was able to crush the Poles.
Enthusiastic Berlin students carried the effigies of Polish leaders in
triumph; but not a sword was drawn. England, France, Austria looked on
silent at the work of Diebitch and Paskievitch, "my two mastiffs," as
the Czar styled them, and the true "_finis Poloniae_" had come. A
Russian Army marching against Kossuth, and the Czar's demand for the
extradition of the heroic Magyar, unmasked the despot. Yet his
European triumph was complete, and the war in the Crimea seemed his
crowning chance--the humiliating of the two Powers which in his eyes
represented Liberty and the Revolution. Every force that personal
rancour, and the devotion of years to one sole end, every measure that
reason and State policy could dictate, lent their aid to stimulate the
efforts of the monarch in this enterprise. The disaster was sudden,
overwhelming, irremediable. Yet in one thing his life was a success,
and that a great one--he had Russianised Russia.

The Crimean War marks a turning-point in the History of Europe only
less significant than the Revolution of 1848. The isolating force of
religion was annulled, and the slowly increasing influence of the East
upon the West affected even the routine of diplomacy. The hopes of the
Carlists and the Jesuits in Spain were frustrated,