and good plan was prepared. Its main features were:
a period of transition from serfage to personal liberty, extending
through twelve or fourteen years; the arrival of the serf at personal
freedom, with ownership of his cabin and the bit of land attached to it;
the gradual reimbursement of masters by serfs; and after this advance to
personal liberty, an advance by easy steps to a sort of political
liberty. Favorable as was this plan to the serf-owners, they attacked it
in various ways; but they could not kill it utterly. Esthonia, Livonia,
and Courland became free. Having failed to arrest the growth of freedom,
the serf-holding caste made every effort to blast the good fruits of
freedom. In Courland they were thwarted; in Esthonia and Livonia they
succeeded during many years; but the eternal laws were too strong for
them, and the fruitage of liberty had grown richer and better.

After these good efforts, Alexander stopped, discouraged. A few
patriotic nobles stood apart from their caste, and strengthened his
hands, as Lafayette and Lincourt strengthened Louis XVI. They even drew
up a plan of voluntary emancipation; formed an association for the
purpose and gained many signatures; but the great weight of that
besotted serf-owning caste was thrown against them, and all came to
naught. Alexander was at last walled in from the great object of his
ambition. Pretended theologians built, between him and emancipation,
walls of Scriptural interpretation; pretended philosophers built walls
of false political economy; pretended statesmen built walls of sham
common-sense. If the Czar could but have mustered courage to cut the
knot! Alas for Russia and for him, he wasted himself in efforts to untie
it. His heart sickened at it; he welcomed death, which alone could
remove him from it.

Alexander's successor, Nicholas I, had been known before his accession
as a mere martinet, a good colonel for parade days, wonderful in
detecting soiled uniforms, terrible in administering petty punishments.
It seems like the story of stupid Brutus over again. Altered
circumstances made a new man of him; and few things are more strange
than the change wrought in his whole bearing and look by that week of
energy in climbing his brother's throne. The great article in Nicholas's
creed was a complete, downright faith in despotism, and in himself as
despotism's apostle. Hence he hated, above all things, a limited
monarchy. He told De Custine that a pure m