no sentimental argument about human dignity had the slightest weight with them; the only thing they had distinctly learned by centuries of bondage and oppression was to trust no one.

In face of this distrust, this awful avenger of human wrong, it becomes painfully interesting to enquire into the present relations between two classes of fellow-creatures, left, for the first time for centuries, free from those conditions which had given license to the one, bondage to the other, and demoralization to both. Before a just balance can be struck each party has to stand the test of severe trial; the one by comparative adversity, the other by temptation. In truth the proprietor had the most cause for consternation.

Having as a rule depended on the heartless screw of serfage for making good the evils of his reckless, selfish, and improvident life, few of the class having even kept an account of their expenditure, the proprietor now finds his existence dependent on a rigid and most unpalatable reform. The task of the enfranchised serf is pleasanter but not so safe; his best interests are not so plainly indicated; for his temptations proceed from a liberty for which he is ill equipped. Past tyranny has made him servile and untruthful-his mixed Tartar nature, indolent and cunning. Two parties in Russia prophesy opposite things of him, and in the difficulty of obtaining exact information two opposite reports reach us. The one, that, as with the increased wages of our English working classes, the liberation of the Russian serf has increased the revenue derived from the tax on brandy-the other that not only has the quantity distilled fallen off more than 3 per cent., but that the consumption of tea and sugar has increased in the same proportion. The certain fact is that the peasant is in a state of transition which must be slow and long. Before he has had time to throw off the vices of slavery he has begun to acquire the abuses of liberty, and is reported to be far more intent on asserting his new rights than on fulfilling his new duties. How should it be otherwise? Centuries of bondage have kept him in a state of nonage. One of the reproaches addressed to those who drew up the Act of Emancipation is, that they relied too much on the simplicity of the peasant, and took no account of his want of conscience. They forgot that that very conscience must be the growth of freedom, and they erred on the right side. One prophesied result, much dreaded, has not, however, appeared. If the enfranchised serfs show no gratitude to the few masters who were kind to them, they show no hostility to those who were the reverse. In matters of business connected with his old master,

where

where his new interests are concerned, he acts towards him with a kind of cunning bonhomie, but with none of the rancour that had been expected.

The Emancipation, we must remember, was the consequence of the Russian defeat in the Crimean war. That broke the proud heart of Nicholas, who, it is known, laid the accomplishment of this long-delayed duty as a solemn injunction on his son.* The logic of history in vain pointed to the next step in succession. The class required by the sovereign to give liberty to their serfs ought in return to have required him to grant a Magna Charta to the whole country. With a few brilliant exceptions the class referred to are, however, unripe for the conception of such an Act, and will be so for long. What the English Barons extorted in 1215, the Russian noblesse are incapable of demanding at the close of the nineteenth century. According to the Russian proverb, they have left one shore, but are still far from reaching the other, and have therefore the shelter of neither.

Altogether three opportunities for justice to a long-suffering race have been neglected in the history of the Czars. The first was in 1490, when the country threw off the yoke of the Tartar, but when the people were denied that freedom which they had helped to achieve; the second was under Peter the Great, who, in his crusade against the barbarism on the surface, omitted to attack that which lay at the root; the third was in 1762, when Peter III., husband of Catherine II., abolished the obligatory service of the noblesse to the Crown, and when, in common justice, the same service from the serfs to the noblesse should have been abolished too. As a matter of history the two sovereigns most renowned in Russia, Peter the Great and Catherine II., by increasing the power of the proprietors, did most to increase the sufferings of the serfs.

It is impossible proximately to predict the future of this gigantic empire, occupied as it is by two distinct bodies which exist side by side, but between which there is no organic tie. Russia consists of two unequal and incongruous halves, which do not and cannot make one whole. The head and the feet

belong in no sense to each other; the one runs after every new fashion, the other as yet does not perceptibly move. The one is that ephemeral creation called la Société, the other is the Nation; the one belongs to 1890, the other to 1490; and for the present the slender rudiments of a middle class are utterly

* The connexion between their enfranchisement and the Crimean War led to the rooted belief among the serfs that it was owing to a request by Napoleon III. inadequate

inadequate to fill the void between them. But that such rudiments do exist is obvious to those who have had opportunities for observation. Scientific men are forming the nucleus of this slowly-coming class. We know from the highest authority that the botanical works of Russia are of so distinguished an order that other nations will have to acquire the Russian language in order to study them; and the same with mineralogy. That such men suffer, like their compatriots, from the universal jobbery and stupidity, is but too true. If there be a first-rate scientist at the head of a class, he has the melancholy certainty that his successor, appointed by Imperial command, will be a man in every way opposed and inferior to himself. The world did not need the example of the Czars to be convinced that the sway of an absolute monarch is doubly baneful, as embodying in himself alone that responsibility which on this gigantic scale no mortal man can wield, and thereby prohibiting all exercise of this great educator of mankind to all below him. The subjects of an autocrat remain virtually like the serfs under their former masters, in perpetual nonage. Under these circumstances the word 'Reform' addressed to an executive, which, while it most wants it, is most interested to prevent it, is a mockery. The Czar may be absolute, but as long as he continues so, though his subjects are drilled and governed to death, he stands helpless in the centre of a vicious circle. All he can do is to order Tchinovniks to control Tchinovniks-in other words to set the evil to remedy the evil. The more safely and sadly therefore may it be predicted that, while absolutism lasts, the principles of Government will never cease to be oppression and repression. With the continuance of this rule, and what we have stated gives no hope of its relaxation, there may soon be nothing good left to encourage. And this is the natural tendency of Absolutism. In Dr. Johnson's words, 'a country governed by a Despot is an inverted cone.'

ART.

ART. VI.-The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton. By T. WEMYSS REID. Two Volumes. London, 1890.

I

N undertaking to write a Life of Lord Houghton, Mr. T. Wemyss Reid had before him a task of considerable difficulty. There was an almost entire absence of the materials which enable a biographer to produce an exciting or a stirring narrative. The events connected with either the public or the private career of Richard Monckton Milnes were not such as lend themselves readily to dramatic treatment. Only a few fragments of his own conversation have been preserved, and of his conversation with others there is but a slight and accidental record. He appears to have kept no diary or commonplace book worthy of particular mention. Some stray jottings here and there are all that he left behind him, besides a desultory correspondence, considerable in extent, but less varied and valuable than might reasonably have been looked for. There are letters from many distinguished persons, but few of them possess remarkable interest. Some of Carlyle's are thoroughly characteristic, but so many of his letters of much the same kind have been published during the last few years, that these additions to the mass will scarcely attract special attention. Their chief interest consists in the insight which they afford into the character of Lord Houghton himself. A mere enumeration of the names of Lord Houghton's correspondents would naturally give rise to expectations of great treasures, but little if anything of that kind will be found in these volumes. As a rule, the letters to him are of a pleasant and friendly nature-nothing more. The bill of fare is most tempting, but the dishes when they come up have very little on them. In his later years, Lord Houghton himself was not a good correspondent, and, indeed, it became exceedingly difficult to read a single line of his handwriting. A friend once received a letter from him which, so far as could be gathered from a word here and there, appeared to contain a request of some little urgency. But the meaning of the note could not be ascertained by any exercise of ingenuity. Upon requesting Lord Houghton to explain it, he returned another copy in what he was pleased to call a 'printed' state, but the only drawback was that the print was more illegible than the writing. Nothing remained but to make a rough guess at his wishes. This, or something like it, was always occurring between himself and his friends. It seems that the printers who charged half-a-crown a sheet extra for Dean Stanley's 'copy' required fifty per cent. extra to set up Lord Houghton's. We cannot say that it was too

much.

much. The letters of the Duke of Wellington in his old age, those of Lord Brougham, and some parts of Sir Walter Scott's handwriting, were not to be deciphered without much study and patience. But we have received specimens of Lord Houghton's bewildering communications which surpassed them all. Mr. Wemyss Reid tells us that at the General Post Office, among other curiosities of the same kind exhibited there, is one of the envelopes addressed by Lord Houghton. That it reached its destination is looked upon as one of the greatest instances of acuteness which the Post Office itself is able to furnish. There can be no doubt that this carelessness, or, perhaps, the sheer inability to make characters with a pen which anybody else could interpret, is one of the causes of the comparatively slight value of the correspondence which his biographer has had to assist him in his work. It is difficult to carry on communications of this kind when on one side they are all but illegible. Moreover, there seems to have been a tendency on the part of Lord Houghton's friends not to enter too seriously into the discussion of any subject with him. He was regarded as a man of society, and even those who knew him well were apt to approach him in that spirit, and rarely in any other. That, undoubtedly, did a great injustice to his real character and abilities, but he had gradually fallen into the habit of doing an injustice to them himself, and the world cannot be expected to trouble itself further than to accept a man in the part he chooses to play. The higher side of Lord Houghton's nature, or the true measure of his capacities, was known to few, and towards the last he seemed himself to take a pleasure in ignoring their existence. That he should be valued chiefly as a man who knew every body, and who was always ready to make his knowledge useful to others, is not altogether surprising.

Of such materials as were at his disposal, Mr. Wemyss Reid has made the best. We have no reason to doubt that he has published everything which was really of public interest and importance in Lord Houghton's papers, so far as the limits of propriety and good taste permitted. Throughout the work, he has displayed sound judgment, right feeling, and unfailing tact. So far as we are able to form an opinion, he has printed nothing which he ought to have omitted, and omitted nothing which he ought to have printed. He has avoided everything which could possibly inflict needless pain upon any member of the large circle of Lord Houghton's friends and acquaintances. He has edited the letters with care, yet, as we should presume, without undue severity. The narrative portions of his memoir are interesting and sufficient, and there is scarcely a passage in the two

volumes