lent outbursts of patriotic
fanaticism; and events in Warsaw brought into hostile contact these two
contradictory elements in the national character. The struggle was only
momentary. Ere long the patriotic feelings gained the upper hand and
crushed all cosmopolitan sympathy with political freedom. The Moscow
Gazette, the first of the papers to recover its mental equilibrium,
thundered against the pseudo-Liberal sentimentalism, which would, if
unchecked, necessarily lead to the dismemberment of the Empire, and
its editor, Katkoff, became for a time the most influential private
individual in the country. A few, indeed, remained true to their
convictions. Herzen, for instance, wrote in the Kolokol a glowing
panegyric on two Russian officers who had refused to fire on the
insurgents; and here and there a good Orthodox Russian might be found
who confessed that he was ashamed of Muravieff's extreme severity
in Lithuania. But such men were few, and were commonly regarded as
traitors, especially after the ill-advised diplomatic intervention of
the Western Powers. Even Herzen, by his publicly expressed sympathy with
the insurgents, lost entirely his popularity and influence among his
fellow-countrymen. The great majority of the public thoroughly approved
of the severe energetic measures adopted by the Government, and when the
insurrection was suppressed, men who had a few months previously spoken
and written in magniloquent terms about humanitarian Liberalism joined
in the ovations offered to Muravieff! At a great dinner given in his
honour, that ruthless administrator of the old Muscovite type, who
had systematically opposed the emancipation of the serfs and had
never concealed his contempt for the Liberal ideas in fashion, could
ironically express his satisfaction at seeing around him so many "new
friends"!** This revulsion of public feeling gave the Moscow Slavophils
an opportunity of again preaching their doctrine that the safety
and prosperity of Russia were to be found, not in the Liberalism and
Constitutionalism of Western Europe, but in patriarchal autocracy,
Eastern Orthodoxy, and other peculiarities of Russian nationality.
Thus the reactionary tendencies gained ground; but Alexander II., while
causing all political agitation to be repressed, did not at once abandon
his policy of introducing radical reforms by means of the Autocratic
Power. On the contrary, he gave orders that the preparatory work for
creating local self