e tribunals, the reckless
squandering of the public money, the miserable condition of the serfs,
the systematic strangulation of all independent opinion or private
initiative, and, above all, the profound apathy of the upper classes,
who seemed quite content with things as they were.

* Vide supra, p. 377 et seq.

With such ugly facts staring them in the face, and with the habit
of looking at things from the moral point of view, these men could
understand how hollow and false were the soothing or triumphant phrases
of official optimism. They did not, indeed, dare to express their
indignation publicly, for the authorities would allow no public
expression of dissatisfaction with the existing state of things, but
they disseminated their ideas among their friends and acquaintances by
means of conversation and manuscript literature, and some of them, as
university professors and writers in the periodical Press, contrived to
awaken in a certain section of the young generation an ardent enthusiasm
for enlightenment and progress, and a vague hope that a brighter day was
about to dawn.

Not a few sympathised with these new conceptions and aspirations, but
the great majority of the nobles regarded them--especially after the
French Revolution of 1848--as revolutionary and dangerous. Thus the
educated classes became divided into two sections, which have sometimes
been called the Liberals and the Conservatives, but which might be
more properly designated the men with aspirations and the apathetically
contented. These latter doubtless felt occasionally the irksomeness of
the existing system, but they had always one consolation--if they were
oppressed at home they were feared abroad. The Tsar was at least a
thorough soldier, possessing an enormous and well-equipped army by
which he might at any moment impose his will on Europe. Ever since the
glorious days of 1812, when Napoleon was forced to make an ignominious
retreat from the ruins of Moscow, the belief that the Russian soldiers
were superior to all others, and that the Russian army was invincible,
had become an article of the popular creed; and the respect which the
voice of Nicholas commanded in Western Europe seemed to prove that
the fact was admitted by foreign nations. In these and similar
considerations the apathetically contented found a justification for
their lethargy.

When it became evident that Russia was about to engage in a trial of
strength with the Western