so limited in power as
hardly to deserve the imperial name. The title of tsar has been
definitely denied to the present constitutional monarch of Russia; he is
really something between a king and a president.

Fearful indeed must have been the communist or nihilist war of Russia of
thirty years ago. The country has hardly recovered from it yet. Had it
not been for the loyalty of the large population of those families
emancipated in 1861 by the Tsar Alexander II. from serfdom, not only the
imperial family, but all the members of the nobility, and the whole
class of wealthy Russians would probably have been put to death by fire
and sword.

* * * * *

Welcome to all lovers of peace and prosperity will be the late
intelligence that, at the Congress of Berlin, all the great powers have
agreed to reduce their standing armies to 50,000 men for each nation;
and that neither power shall increase its forces, without two months'
notice to all the rest. The "volunteer" military organizations will
still be allowed, besides these armies; but zeal for rifle practice
seems to be very much on the wane. It is probable that occasional showy
parades may soon be all that is left in civilized countries of the
"pomp and circumstance of glorious war."

It is painful to know that in Africa, and in Mongolian Asia, the arts of
destruction have been more rapidly borrowed from Europe than those of
peace and progress. It is said that Gatling guns, as well as Minie
rifles and dynamite shells, and the newly reinvented projectile Greek
fire, are now in use with terrible effect between hostile tribes in
Central Africa, officered in great part by European and American
adventurers.

* * * * *

The international coinage arrangement, on the decimal system, so long in
use between England, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States, will
be extended next year, by agreement, to Spain, Russia, Denmark, and
Greece. It is wonderful how our fathers, even almost down to the present
generation, were satisfied with any scheme of weights and measures other
than the metrical, now so universally in use.

* * * * *

From the South African Dutch-English Federal States we hear of
settlement and progress. The Australian Republic also is thriving.
Melbourne has now 600,000 inhabitants. How many millions of people
to-day speak the English language! All North America (exce