ing the words,

"I hate thee and thy race,
Thou autocratic villain,"

does not lack in allusive clearness. Secretly printed abroad, his
writings were largely propagated at Alexander the Second's accession.
Again, men like Lawroff--who, ten years later, was imprisoned as a
suspect, after Karakasoff's attempt against the life of the Czar--had
celebrated the advent of the successor of Nicholas with such ironically
questionable sentiments as this:--

"Be proud, ye Russian men,
Of being the slaves of a Czar!"

Writers of comedies, novelists, delineators of the life of the people,
ultra-realistic and cynical describers of the criminal classes arose in
rapid succession, whose tendency, one and all, was to show to what a
state of corruption Russian society, from top to bottom, had come under
the famous "Champion of Order," the dreaded Nicholas. That Czar had been
in the habit of speaking of Turkey as the Sick Man. Russia was now shown
to be the Sick Man. Neither did St. Petersburg, Moscow or the other
chief towns, alone serve as a theme for this kind of semi-political
literature. "Provincial Sketches" also came out in a similar strain.
These publications obtained an ever-increasing success among those
classes--few in number, it is true--which were able to read. A whole
"Revelation Literature" sprang up, dealing with cases of governmental
corruption. The censorship could not be upheld any longer against these
writers with the strict severity of the previous reign. A beaten
Absolutism had to do things a little more cautiously; and the watchful
eyes of men hitherto treated like slaves quickly found out, with the
rapid glance and intuition of the oppressed, that it was safe to "dare
it on" a little more than they would have dreamt of doing before the end
of the Crimean War. Truly, those Liberals in this country who now
denounce that war as a mistake and even a crime, do not know, or do not
care to remember, what a relief it brought to Russian Liberals
themselves.

Soon after the death of Nicholas, desires, until then only muttered,
were publicly expressed for the recall and the amnesty of the Martyrs of
the Conspiracy and the Insurrection of December, 1825. Pestel, Ryleieff,
Bestujeff-Rumin, and the other leaders, had been strung up on the
gallows. Many of those transported to Siberia had died a miserable
felon's death in the lead-mines. Brought up in the lap of luxury, they
ended like galley-slaves, because they had