not
that of healthy normal action, but of death--and underneath the surface
lay secret and rapidly spreading corruption. The army still possessed
that dashing gallantry which it had displayed in the campaigns of
Suvorof, that dogged, stoical bravery which had checked the advance of
Napoleon on the field of Borodino, and that wondrous power of endurance
which had often redeemed the negligence of generals and the defects of
the commissariat; but the result was now not victory, but defeat. How
could this be explained except by the radical defects of that system
which had been long practised with such inflexible perseverance? The
Government had imagined that it could do everything by its own wisdom
and energy, and in reality it had done nothing, or worse than nothing.
The higher officers had learned only too well to be mere automata; the
ameliorations in the military organisation, on which Nicholas had always
bestowed special attention, were found to exist for the most part only
in the official reports; the shameful exploits of the commissariat
department were such as to excite the indignation of those who had
long lived in an atmosphere of official jobbery and peculation; and
the finances, which people had generally supposed to be in a highly
satisfactory condition, had become seriously crippled by the first great
national effort.

This deep and wide-spread dissatisfaction was not allowed to appear
in the Press, but it found very free expression in the manuscript
literature and in conversation. In almost every house--I mean, of
course, among the educated classes--words were spoken which a few months
before would have seemed treasonable, if not blasphemous. Philippics and
satires in prose and verse were written by the dozen, and circulated
in hundreds of copies. A pasquil on the Commander in Chief, or a tirade
against the Government, was sure to be eagerly read and warmly approved
of. As a specimen of this kind of literature, and an illustration of the
public opinion of the time, I may translate here one of those metrical
tirades. Though it was never printed, it obtained a wide circulation:

"'God has placed me over Russia,' said the Tsar to us, 'and you must bow
down before me, for my throne is His altar. Trouble not yourselves with
public affairs, for I think for you and watch over you every hour. My
watchful eye detects internal evils and the machinations of foreign
enemies; and I have no need of counsel, for God inspi