he accession of Alexander. They wanted to throw
down the Chinese Wall which Nicholas had built around them--if it is not
an insult to the Chinese to compare the wall they erected as a
protection against barbarism with the barrier set up by Nicholas against
Western ideas of culture and freedom. At first, Alexander II. did not
hold out any hope of reform. Driven to straits, he busied himself with
throwing a sop to public opinion by various small relaxations in
administrative matters. They were small enough; and they were given with
a niggard hand.

Anyone taking a survey of the earlier part of the reign of Alexander II.
must see that the main object of his government was to foil the tendency
towards the introduction of parliamentary institutions, which was
sullenly but perceptibly making its way among the better educated
section of the nation; that, with the view of attaining this reactionary
end, he pursued the traditional despotic policy of approaching the lower
classes on the one hand, and engaging the country in fresh warlike
enterprise abroad on the other. Foiled in Europe by England and France,
he throws his armies, after the conclusion of the Peace of Paris, with
renewed fury upon the Tcherkess tribes. They had long barred the way of
Russia towards Asia Minor and Persia, thereby insuring the safety of
India from that side. Now Schamyl, the hoary-headed warrior-prophet, is
compelled to surrender in his last mountain stronghold. From his lofty
Alpine home, which is filled with the renown of his romantic deeds, he
is carried a prisoner to St. Petersburg, there to be stared at by the
crowd of decorated slaves of autocracy.

With this "pacification" of the Caucasus, the Czar obtained the
unimpeded use of the high-road leading into Asia Minor. He then struck a
blow against the independent tribes on the eastern shore of the Caspian.
With the Court of Teheran he entered into relations calculated to
threaten Turkey with a double danger from the Asiatic side, in case of a
renewal of war. Again, he enlarged his Empire, at the cost of China, by
filching territories as extensive as some of the greatest European
countries. In what once was Independent Turkestan, his armies overran
one Khanate after the other, thus coming nearer and nearer to India from
the north-west. There is a striking war-picture by Vereshagin, with a
pyramid of skulls as its centre--a very Golgotha of the horrors of
massacre; but Russian monarchs, in their