get everything, save his desire to endow
them with more freedom. Whatever his faults, they will consider
that he perished in their cause, and _what they will be most
disposed to blame will be the unsteadiness of his hand and the
uncertainty of his aim_."

The _Times_ also, whilst pleading for Solovieff's execution,
acknowledged the fact of the sway of Czardom being rotten to the core,
in the following words:--"It cannot be disputed that whole classes in
Russia are penetrated almost to desperation with a sense of social
oppression and wrong.... A social condition like this is the natural
soil in which the brooding temperament which seeks a remedy in
assassination is nourished."

When all the safety-valves are closed, Nature takes its revenge, and
ever and anon occasions the inevitable outburst. Russia is at present
under a state of siege from St. Petersburg to Moscow and Warsaw, from
Kieff to Kharkoff and Odessa. An Army of Porters, about 15,000 strong,
must watch the streets of the capital, day and night; and policemen are
set to watch the watchers. Under General Gurko, the crosser of the
Balkans, who is now Vice-Emperor, the last lines of legality have also
been crossed--if the word "legality" applies at all to Russian
institutions. He is invested with unlimited powers, in the place of the
disheartened tyrant. The very Grand Dukes are under his orders. Arrests
among officers of the army have been the immediate consequence of
General Gurko's satrap rule. In several cases, compromising letters and
prints were discovered, and executions both of officers, like Lieutenant
Dubrovin, and of privates, have followed. The gallows are in permanent
activity. But perhaps the most significant feature--and a promising one
too--is the order issued, under court-martial law, that in all the
barracks a list of the soldiers' arms is to be drawn up, and to be
handed over to the police! This is the strongest sign of a suspicion
against the army itself; and on the army the whole power of Czardom
reposes.

When we hear of the arrest of a Senator, of a Director of the Imperial
Bank, of Professors, of the son of the Chancellor of the dreaded "Third
Section," of the wife of the procurator of a Military Court, of the
nephew of the Chief of the Secret Police, and many other such cases, we
are driven to the conclusion that, in spite of its furious acts of
repression, the autocratic system has become untenable--that it must
s