se who passed by, reviling and wagging their
heads. Whenever these oppressors revived some old feudal wrong, Nicholas
backed them in the name of religion; whenever their nations struggled to
preserve some great right, Nicholas crushed them in the name of law and
order. With these pauper princes his children intermarried, and he fed
them with his crumbs and clothed them with scraps of his purple. The
visitor can see today, in every one of their dwarf palaces, some of his
malachite vases or porcelain bowls or porphyry columns.

But the people of Western Europe distrusted him as much as their rulers
worshipped; and some of these same presents to their rulers have become
trifle-monuments of no mean value in showing that popular idea of
Russian policy. Foremost among these stand those two bronze masses of
statuary in front of the Royal Palace at Berlin, representing fiery
horses restrained by strong men. Pompous inscriptions proclaim these
presents from Nicholas; but the people, knowing the man and his
measures, have fastened upon one of these curbed steeds the name of
"Progress Checked," and on the other "Retrogression Encouraged."

A few days before Nicholas's self-will brought him to his deathbed we
saw him ride through the St. Petersburg streets with no pomp and no
attendants, yet in as great pride as ever despotism gave a man. At his
approach, nobles uncovered and looked docile, soldiers faced about and
became statues, long-bearded peasants bowed to the ground with the air
of men on whose vision a miracle flashes. For there was one who could
make or mar all fortunes--the absolute owner of street and houses and
passers-by--one who owned the patent and dispensed the right to tread
that soil, to breathe that air, to be glorified in that sunlight and
amid those snow crystals. And he looked it all. Though at that moment
his army was entrapped by military stratagem, and he himself was
entrapped by diplomatic stratagem, that face and form were proud and
confident as ever.

There was in this attitude toward Europe--in this standing forth as the
representative man of absolutism, and breasting the nineteenth
century--something of greatness; but in his attitude toward Russia this
greatness was wretchedly diminished. For, as Alexander I was a good man
enticed out of goodness by the baits of Napoleon, Nicholas was a great
man scared out of greatness by the ever-recurring phantom of the French
Revolution.

In those first days of