death-bed, Nicholas is stated to have said to his
son:-- "Thou hast two enemies--the nobility and the Poles. Emancipate
the serfs; and do not allow the Poles any Constitution!"

It is impossible, with the mystery which envelopes the last days of
Nicholas, to know whether these words are authentic. At all events,
Alexander did not give back to the Poles the Constitution they
possessed until 1830. Nor did he grant a Constitution to the Russians
either. He emancipated the serfs--but not before the principles which
had actuated the Conspirators of 1817-25 once more began to show
themselves among the upper strata of society; and in passing his
measure, he mainly sought to deprive a restive nobility of some of its
influence, and to take the wind out of the sails of those Liberal
agitators who would have made the abolition of bondage the outcome of
the establishment of a freely-chosen Legislature. When, finally, the
Poles, counting upon a corresponding movement in Russia, resolved upon
that heroic, though desperate, rising which by anticipation I alluded to
in the last article, such fresh cruelties were practised by Alexander
II. against the vanquished victims, that every human heart worthy of the
name must shudder at the mere recollection of them.

From those days, however, the Conspiratory Movement in Russia began to
assume larger proportions. What I have said in the preceding pages, goes
far to explain the violence by which that movement has latterly been
characterized.

V.

Partly from the aggressiveness which is the natural bent of a despotic
military monarchy, partly from the wish to check the home-growth of
Liberal sentiments by frequent blood-letting abroad, the government of
Alexander II. has tried to meet the danger which has been gathering
round the autocratic system by lighting up foreign wars. Central Asia
has served him for that purpose. So has Turkey. The flag of ambition was
flaunted before public opinion as soon as there was a revival of the
Opposition tendency in internal affairs.

An attempt at opening up the whole Eastern Question was made as early as
1870, when France and Germany were locked together in deadly embrace.
The confidential despatches and cypher telegrams exchanged in 1870
between Mr. de Novikoff, the Russian Ambassador at Vienna, and Mr.
Ionin, the Russian Consul-General at Ragusa, which fortunately came to
light some years ago, have fully proved that even then Muscovite policy
busied