n intervention, in 1733. In 1741 Maria
Theresa relied on Russia, and in 1746 Russia and the Empress of Germany
formed a defensive alliance. The _Cotillon_ Coalition of the Seven
Years' War, formed for the destruction of Frederic II., and the parties
to which were the Czarina Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, and Madame de
Pompadour,--a drunkard, a prude, and a harlot,--brought Russia famously
forward in Europe. In the Eighty-Seventh Letter of Goldsmith's _Citizen
of the World_, published a century ago, are some very just and
discriminating remarks on "the folly of the Western parts of Europe in
employing the Russians to fight their battles," which show that their
author was far in advance of his time, and that he foresaw the growth
of Russia in importance before she had seized upon Poland. In Catharine
II.'s time, the Russian Empire was the object of much adulation from
Western envoys, and the English sought to obtain the assistance of
the barbarians in the American War, but with not such success as they
desired, though they managed to keep our envoy from the court, and to
make Russia unfriendly to us. Our diplomatic relations with Russia did
not begin until a generation after the Declaration of Independence.]

Thus the United States and Russia began their careers at the same time,
as nations destined to have influence in the ordering of Western life.
They were then, as they are now, very unlike to each other. In one
respect only was there any resemblance between them: In this country
there were some myriads of slaves, and in Russia there were many
millions of serfs. Now who, of all the sagacious, far-sighted men then
living, could have ventured to predict that at the end of one hundred
years the American nation that was so soon to be should be engaged in a
civil contest having for its object, on the part of those who began
it, the perpetuation and extension of slavery, while Russia should be
threatened with such a contest because her government, an autocracy,
had abolished serfdom? Many years earlier, Berkeley had predicted that
Time's last and noblest offspring would be the nation that was growing
up in North America; and when he died, in 1753, he would not have
admitted that slavery was an institution which his favorite land could
hug to its bosom, or that America would be less benevolent than that
semi-barbarous empire which was rising in the East,--an empire, to use
his own thought, which Europe was breeding in her decay. F