his reign, when he enforced loyalty with
grape-shot and halter, Nicholas dared much and stood firm; but his
character soon showed another side. Fearless as he was before bright
bayonets, he was an utter coward before bright ideas. He laughed at the
flash of cannon, but he trembled at the flash of a new living thought.
Whenever, then, he attempted a great thing for his nation, he was sure
to be scared back from its completion by fear of revolution. And so,
today, he who looks through Russia for Nicholas's works finds a number
of great things he had done, but each is single, insulated, not preceded
logically, not followed effectively. Take, as an example of this, his
railway-building.

His own pride and Russian interest demanded railways. He scanned the
world with that keen eye of his, saw that American energy was the best
supplement to Russian capital; his will darted quickly, struck afar, and
Americans came to build his road from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Nothing
can be more complete. It is an air-line road, and so perfect that the
traveller finds few places where the rails do not meet, before and
behind him, in the horizon. The track is double, the rails very heavy
and admirably ballasted; station-houses and engine-houses are splendid
in build, perfect in arrangement, and surrounded by neat gardens. The
whole work is worthy of the Pyramid builders. The traveller is whirled
by culverts, abutments, and walls of dressed granite, through cuttings
where the earth on either side is carefully paved or turfed to the
summit. Ranges of Greek columns are reared as crossings in the midst of
broad marshes, lions' heads in bronzed iron stare out upon vast wastes
where never rose even the smoke from a serf's kennel.

All this seems good; and a ride of four hundred miles through such
glories rarely fails to set the traveller at chanting the praises of the
Emperor who conceived them. But when the traveller notes that complete
isolation of the work from all conditions necessary to its success, his
praises grow fainter. He sees that Nicholas held back from continuing
the road to Odessa, though half the money spent in making the road an
imperial plaything would have built a good, solid extension to that most
important seaport; he sees that Nicholas dared not untie police
regulations, and that commerce is wretchedly meagre. Contrary to what
would obtain under a free system, this great public work found the
country wretched and left it wre