ce, that from her came constant
encouragement in the great work. Wolowski, Mazade, and other
true-hearted men sent forth from leading reviews and journals words of
sympathy, words of help, words of cheer.

Not so England. Just as, in the French Revolution of 1789, while yet
that Revolution was noble and good, while yet Lafayette and Bailly held
it, leaders in English thought who had quickened the opinions which
had caused the Revolution sent malignant prophecies and prompted foul
blows,--just as, in this our own struggle, leaders in English thought
who have helped create the opinion which has brought on this struggle
now deal treacherously with us,--so, in this battle of Alexander against
a foul wrong, they seized this time of all times to show all the
wrongs and absurdities of which Russia ever had been or ever might be
guilty,--criticized, carped, sent plentifully haughty advice, depressing
sympathy, malignant prophecy.

Review-articles, based on no real knowledge of Russia, announced desire
for serf-emancipation,--and then, in the modern English way, with
plentiful pyrotechnics of antithesis and paradox, threw a gloomy light
into the skilfully pictured depths of Imperial despotism, official
corruption, and national bankruptcy.

They revived Old-World objections, which, to one acquainted with the
most every-day workings of serfage, were ridiculous.

It was said, that, if the serfs lost the protection of their owners,
they might fall a prey to rapacious officials. As well might it
have been argued that a mother should never loose her son from her
apron-strings.

It was said that "serfism excludes pauperism,"--that, if the serf owes
work to his owner in the prime of life, the owner owes support to his
serf in the decline of life. No lie could be more absurd to one who had
seen Russian life. We were first greeted, on entering Russia, by a
beggar who knelt in the mud; at Kovno eighteen beggars besieged the
coach,--and Kovno was hardly worse than scores of other towns; within a
day's ride of St. Petersburg a woman begged piteously for means to keep
soul and body together, and finished the refutation of that sonorous
English theory,--for she had been discharged from her master's service
in the metropolis as too feeble, and had been sent back to his domain,
afar in the country, on foot and without money.

It was said that freed peasants would not work. But, despite volleys
of predictions that they _would_ not work if