6

and myriads move with no freedom, although, in another sense,
their country as a whole is rapidly progressive. The dominant
principle with himself is to level and mould all domestic
matters from the Baltic to the shores of Kamschatka into one
type of Russian nationality and the infallible orthodoxy of the
Greek church. Even the free patriarchal commonwealth of the
Don Cossacks has been organized upon this scheme; and those
lovers of tallow and train-oil profess themselves perfectly con-
tented with the new state of things. The plan of macadam-
‘izing men may be beneficial in the Asiatic provinces where it
raises their level, but in the same proportion it will lower that
level on the German frontier, if applied to the more civilized
people dwelling there. This policy has been exhibited in its
• naked ruthlessness towards the Poles, among whom self-
interest most strongly urged it, and who seemed to have the
weakest claim for mercy. But through the long vistas of
* futurity, a doubt may be divined, whether the haste in dena-
'tionalizing Poland has secured real speed; whether the inter-
position of a higher justice may not produce results which

political cunning is little prepared for.' Meanwhile the com-
pulsory study of the Russian tongue has been ordered. There
is to come a time when polyphony shall cease amongst from
threescore to fourscore millions of bondsmen. Nicholas enter-
tains the idea, that forasmuch as their political state is one,
their religion and language may as well be one and the same
also. What else should be expected from the wearer of a
crown, to which are attached in bonâ fide proprietorship, no less
than 21,500,000 serfs,—both souls as well as bodies, according
to Russian estimation? His nobility possess 23,000,000 more
of these same sort of goods and chattels; with only the slight
difference between the tyrant and the aristocracy which exists
here between a man and his wife,—where all hers are his,

and all his is his own ! Such are the naked facts of the case.
These forty-four or five millions have to bear the bulk of taxa-
tion. Slavery is the Atlas upholding the social firmament of
the Muscovite world. What will be the crash, when it falls,
since fall some day it must, that the throne of justice may be
set up, and the golden sceptre of religion and liberty waved in
glorious triumph over the wreck and ruin! Until, however, its
doomed destiny arrive, both the diadem and coronet are trying
to turn their human cattle to account, and make manufacturing
machines of them. Brindley, the projector of the Great Junc-
tion Canal, informed our House of Commons that the Almighty
had created and contrived natural rivers to feed navigable
canals; and the Czar, with his magnates, impregnated with
only half an analogous idea, are applying physical principles to
político-economical purposes. Much confusion, at no great

1

1

distance of time, may be anticipated. Many factories have been erected by the government; and many more by princes, counts, and barons. The greater concerns seem to be altogether passing into their hands. Many nobles have already succeeded by these means in clearing off the incumbrances

from their vast estates, and so releasing themselves from their dependence on court favor. Their serfs are at once workmen ' and machines,' under the auspices of this singular spectacle of a twofold titled class, passing their nights in palaces and their days in counting-houses; all this, too, with an absolute master watching the entire concern, for the success of which none can be so deeply concerned as himself. Meanwhile the rapid multiplication of the nobility is a matter of much statistical interest. The European provinces contain within Russia alone about 540,000 hereditary, and 160,000 personal nobles, making up 700,000 individuals,-a seventieth part of the whole population. In Poland, there were in 1837 no less than 283,420 nobles, or about one fourteenth portion of her total inhabitants. Hungary, as is well known, presents a somewhat similar spectacle.

The burgher-class in Russia is rising very gradually; for the inhabitants of the towns (exclusive of Poland), according to the last census, of the middle and lower classes, amounted to 4,175,869 persons; of which only 251,961 belonged to the commercial families, and 2,773,416 to the guilds of handicraft and tradesmen. The whole number of burghers in 1834, according to the journal of the home department, was 835,071. Five years later (1839) the entire number of Russian merchants was 36,617, of which only 889 were in the first guild, with a declared trading capital of £1,932,608; 1874 merchants were in the second guild, with £1,630,000 ; 33,808 were in the third guild, with a capital of £11,759,300 ; besides which there were 46 foreigners with a capital of £100,000. Add to these 5299 trading peasants, the nature of whose traffic is accurately defined by their trading certificate; only 22 of these belonged to the first two, the remaining 5277 fell into the third and fourth classes. In the class of peasants were included the military settlers and their families, the Cossacks, Calmucks, and Baschkirs; their united numbers were of. ficially reckoned at 1,932,165. The same documents for that year gave 44,826,288 as the number of individuals belonging to the class of peasants; of which 21,463,993 were the property of the crown, and 23,362,595 belonged to different landed proprietors.'--pp. 180, 181.

With respect to spiritual matters, the emperor, as we have already perceived, is head of the Greek Catholic church, comprising within the limits of Russia Proper about nine-elevenths of the population, or 45,000,000. A religious war of conquest has been for nearly half a generation going forward against the Romanists, as wet as the Armenians. The old Greek Roman

Union, on the terms that, retaining the Greek forms, the pope
should be acknowledged supreme head of the church, arranged
as far back as A.D. 1595 between Russia and Rome, has been
lately annihilated. A similar combination for Little Russia
shared the same fate near two hundred years since. By the
ukase of the 5th of July, 1839, on this subject, the Vatican
has lost nearly 4,000,000 of adherents; so that the papal allo-
cution might well style it the most bitter and melancholy
event which has fallen out since the Reformation. This heavy
blow and great discouragement will be felt in Europe, because
* all the life of Romanism is thus roused against Russia; because
· Austria is called on as the champion of Sclavonian Romanism;
• and because, while another rent has been thus made between
political absolutism and the Roman church, the latter is forced
to throw itself for support on public sympathy.' It must be
borne in mind also, that in Hungary alone there are four mil-
lions of Greek Christians, besides those in Wallachia, Moldavia,
Turkey, the new kingdom of Greece, and throughout the Medi-
teranean shores and islands. The clergy of the Greek church,
within all the Russias, amount to upwards of 500,000 indi-
viduals,-awakening every day, it is to be trusted, from their
torpor and gross superstition, as compared with past times, and
not likely to forget that Russian eagles, as well as Roman and
Austrian ones, have gleamed from the Alps upon the plains of
Lombardy and Italy. The achievements of another Suwarrow,
in some future European struggle, may be possibly directed
more nearly against the Seven Hills and the Castle of St. An-
gelo,—whose religious subjects, under the auspices of the czar
do not now exceed half a dozen millions. The Protestants ma-
be stated at about 3,000,000; the Mahometans at 3,500,000
whilst Judaism, Lamaism, Fetishism, Schamanism, and Poly
theism, divide the remainder. One can hardly fail feeling som
degree of interest as to the recent efforts of the Bible Society,
which Alexander so warmly patronized. Doctor Lyall observes,
that 'the empire may not have been ripe enough to receive all
* the benefits anticipated from them by some; but a few seeds

may fall into good ground, and in time may send forth bloom‘ing fruits amidst the widely-extended field of tares. Their effects may be looked for long after the present races shall ' have passed away from the face of the earth.'

We have only space left us for glancing cursorily at the Forces, the Finances, and the probable. Foreign Policy of Nicholas and his immense empire. The two vast armies, existing down to 1835, have since that year been consolidated into one, with a considerably reduced staff in consequence. Its subdivisions consist of six corps of infantry, each 48,000 strong, with 12,000 cavalry attached to it, and 120 pieces of artillery.

south and west Russia, are said to have undergone no slight improvement. The forests cover 486,000,000 acres of ground, of which 326,000,000 are crown property,—notwithstanding, too, that vast injury has been inficted upon many of them through immoderate or injudicious cutting. The average export of timber may be stated at £400,000 per annum, of which at least a moiety comes to ourselves. Manufacturing skill is in its transitionary state, perhaps requiring factitious protection, until the different products attain greater excellence. The number of manufactories has augmented prodigiously, from 2270 in 1801, to 3724 in 1820, to 6450 in 1837, and to 6855 in 1838, employing 412,931 masters and workmen. Of these establishments 606 were for woollen goods, 227 for silks, 446 for weaving, 1918 for leather-dressing, 444 for candle-making, 486 for metallic hardware, and the rest for saltpetre, sugar, potash, chemical, color, tobacco, and paper works. The internal trade circulates through the means of such busy and crowded fairs as are held at Novogorod, whither goods are often brought to the value of nearly £8,000,000, of which at least one-tenth comes from China ! The five other fairs of Korennaja, Irbit, Rostow, Kretchensk, and Romny, in the governments respectively of Kursk, Perm, Poltawa, and Jakutzk, presented wares, taken altogether, in 1838, to the estimated amount of £2,500,000. The total of Russian imports from foreign countries for 1838 came to something under £11,000,000, of which one-twelfth came by land; one-fourth consisted of consumables, one-half was for the use of manufactories, and one-fourth was manufactured goods. The gross exports for the year 1838 came to nearly £14,000,000, of which a fifth passes through Riga, a tenth through Odessa, a twentieth through Archangel and Taganrog:

As to Foreign Policy, the able diplomacy of the cabinet at St. Petersburg has grown into a proverb all over Europe. It cannot be reproached with losing by the pen what was won with the sword.' Scions of the aristocracy must consult national and not class interests there, or else they quickly find their

way to the snows and wildernesses of Siberia. Nature herself seems to have traced the boundaries of a stupen. dous empire within the Baltic, the Icy Sea, the Ural Mountains, the Caspian, the Caucasian range, the Black Sea, and the Carpathians : in the west alone she left it open for the arms and policy of nations to diminish or increase its extent: for Siberia Proper can only be regarded as a wide and waste court-yard attached to the main edifice of the Russian state: but southern Siberia is capable of improvement, and will probably serve as a base of operations from whence European culture may penetrate into central Asia, which, though now benumbed, is not hopelessly dead. When the Russian power reached the gates