e early years of his reign. Napoleonism
and Liberalism were the same thing in the mind of Alexander, and he
finally came to regard serfdom itself as something that should not be
touched. It was a stone in that social edifice which he was determined
to maintain at all hazards. The plan of emancipation had worked well in
the outlying Baltic provinces, where there were few or no Russians, but
he discouraged its application to other portions of his dominions.
Some of his greatest nobles were anxious to take the lead as
emancipationists, but he would not allow them to proceed in the only way
that promised success, and so the bondage system was continued with the
approbation of the Czar. In his last years, Alexander, though still
quite a young man,--he was but forty-eight when he died,--was the most
determined enemy of liberty in Europe or Asia.

The Emperor Nicholas began his remarkable reign with the desire strong
in his mind to emancipate the serfs,--or, if that be too sweeping
an expression, so to improve their condition as to render their
emancipation by his successors a comparatively easy proceeding. Much of
his legislation shows this, and that he was aware that the time must
come when the serfs could no longer be deprived of their freedom. Such
was the effect of his conduct, however, that all that he did in
behalf of the serfs was attributed to a desire on his part to create
ill-feeling between the nobility and the peasants. Then he was so
thoroughly arbitrary in his disposition, that he often neutralized the
good he did by his manner of doing it. But that which mainly prevented
him from doing much for his people was his determination to maintain the
position which Russia had acquired in Europe, and to maintain it, too,
in the interest of despotism, "pure and simple." A succession of events
caused the Czar's attention to be drawn to foreign affairs. The French
Revolution of 1830, the Polish Revolution of the same year, the troubles
in Germany, the Reform contest in England, the change in the order of
the Spanish succession, the outbreaks in Italy,--these things, and
others of a similar character, all of which were protests against
that European system which Russia had established and still favored,
compelled Nicholas to look abroad, and to neglect, measurably, domestic
government. At a later period, he was one of the parties to that
combination of great powers which threatened France with a renewal of
those invasions f