20,000.[27] They were talking of St.
Petersburg and its palaces. The Duke said that the fortunes of
the great Russian nobles--the Tolstoys, &c.--were so diminished
that they lived in corners of their great palaces; but this was
owing to the division of property and the great military
colonies, by which the Crown lands were absorbed, and the
Emperors had no longer the means of enriching the nobles by
enormous donations as formerly. When to these circumstances are
added the amelioration of the condition of the serfs, and the
spirit of general improvement, and the growth of Liberal ideas,
generated by intercommunication with the rest of Europe, it is
impossible to doubt that a revolution must overtake Russia within
a short period, and probably the Emperor has undertaken this war
in order to give vent to the restless humours which are beginning
to work. I said so to Lord Bathurst, and he replied that 'he
thought so too, but that the present Emperor was a man of great
firmness,' as if any individual authority or character could stem
the torrent of determined action impelled by universal revolution
of feeling and opinion. He said the late Emperor was so well
aware of this that he died of the vexation it had caused him,
which was aggravated by the reflection that he was in great
measure himself the cause of it. He was so bit by Liberal
opinions, and so delighted with the effects he saw in other
countries flowing from the diffusion of intelligence and freedom,
that he wished to engraft these dangerous exotics upon the rude
and unprepared soil of his own slavish community. When he went to
Oxford he was so captivated with the venerable grandeur of that
University that he declared he would build one when he got
home, and it is equally true that he said he 'would have an
Opposition.' These follies were engendered in the brain of a very
intelligent man by the mixture of such crudities with an
unbounded volition, and the whole fermented by a lively
imagination and a sincere desire to confer great benefits on his
country.

[27] [This seems an extraordinary statement, but it shows
how well informed the Duke was. In Major von Moltke's
narrative of the campaign of 1828 he estimates the
average force of the Russian army at 100,000. But from
May 1828 to February 1829 no less than 210,108 men
passed through the hospitals, or died in them. So that,
as Moltke remarks, in the