r the control of the
nobility.

[Illustration: The Coronation of the Czar Alexander III., 1883. The
Emperor crowning the Empress at the Church of the Assumption. From a
drawing by Edwin B. Child.]

It was a stern, joyless reign, without one act intended to make glad
the hearts of the people. The depressing conditions in which he lived
gradually undermined the health of the Emperor. He was carried in
dying condition to Livadia, and there, surrounded by his wife and his
children, he expired November 1, 1894.

CHAPTER XXVI

FINLAND--HAGUE TRIBUNAL--POLITICAL CONDITIONS

When Nicholas II., the gentle-faced young son of Alexander, came to the
throne there were hopes that a new era for Russia was about to
commence. There has been nothing yet to justify that hope. The
austere policy pursued by his father has not been changed. The recent
decree which has brought grief and dismay into Finland is not the act
of a liberal sovereign! A forcible Russification of that state has
been ordered, and the press in Finland has been prohibited from
censuring the _ukase_ which has brought despair to the hearts and homes
of the people. The Russian language has been made obligatory in the
university of Helsingfors and in the schools, together with other
severe measures pointing unmistakably to a purpose of effacing the
Finnish nationality--a nationality, too, which has never by disloyalty
or insurrection merited the fate of Poland.

But if this has struck a discordant note, the invitation to a
Conference of the Nations with a view to a general disarmament has been
one of thrilling and unexpected sweetness and harmony. Whether the
Peace Congress at The Hague (1899) does or does not arrive at important
immediate results, its existence is one of the most significant facts
of modern times. It is the first step on the way to that millennial
era of universal peace toward which a perfected Christian civilization
must eventually lead us, and it remained for an autocratic Tsar of
Russia to sound the call and to be the leader in this movement.

At the death-bed of his father, Nicholas was betrothed to a princess of
the House of Hesse, whose mother was Princess Alice, daughter of Queen
Victoria. Upon her marriage this Anglo-German princess was compelled
to make a public renunciation of her own faith, and to accept that of
her imperial consort--the orthodox faith of Russia. The personal
traits of the Emperor seem so exemplary th