in former reigns will hardly be known for some time yet. A debased class has to learn to speak the language, and even to realise the ideas of manhood, before it can convey any true impression of its experience in slavery. Our grandchildren will know more than we can by any means learn of the troubles of serf life in Russia: but, if there had been no prior revelations of restless misery, we should perceive something of it now by the discontents with which the Czar is struggling. The people find themselves practically still bound to their proprietors; and they rage and storm, or throw themselves down heartbroken,—sure that they are betrayed, and only hoping that the Czar cannot know of it. How much these poor people have to do with the conflagrations, time may show. As I have said, it does not seem probable that the mischief should be their work; but there is no doubt about their being in a wild state of discontent. There is intelligence enough among them, and there was a sufficiently steady expectation of freedom to have rendered the transition to a system of free labour safe and practicable, if not easy: but the enterprise was unsteadily proposed, begun at the wrong end, rendered dangerous to the proprietors, and disappointing to the peasants; and the consequence is that in some regions the woods are swarming with hungry outlaws, or the peasants and the soldiery are fighting, or fraternising against the nobles; or there are long rows of mutineers suffering as malefactors. One would like to know more of the brighter side. There must be estates, and we would fain hope whole provinces, where the proprietors have succeeded in making the people understand their own case, and in inducing them to work heartily, in discharge of their obligations: but we are still kept waiting for this better news, though we may reasonably look to have it any day.
The free intellectual order of citizens are now regarded with respectful compassion by the best citizens of all countries. Some of them have been driven along the roads to Siberia. Some are already there, sentenced never more to see home and friends: some are sunk into the hopelessness of frontier military service; and many more are suffering under enforced silence and stagnation in their own towns and homes. The University is closed; the school is broken up; the key is carried away from the lecture-room or club-house door. Precious books are seized and burnt; and spies and informers are everywhere. Two men cannot converse about the stars,—one man cannot work the multiplication table, without being suspected of punishable sedition. In the days of the former Alexander the members of the Schelling society were indulged with liberty of discussion, because, as the Emperor remarked, they would thus be occupied, without any danger of anybody reaching any practical conclusion: and even now the School of Arts is kept open at Warsaw,—the authorities saying: “Let them paint, and then they won’t think:” but in the great Russian cities, everything of the sort is superseded. Yet, I cannot but believe that the intellectual class is the least miserable. No doubt the highest order of citizen suffers from a throng of bitter emotions; his friends are in prison or in exile; his own pursuits are stopped, and his bread with them; a generation of promising young men are turned away from a nobler to a lower order of occupations; but still, these are signs and tokens that the hour, long prayed for, is at hand. These must be the incidents of the time whenever freedom does arrive; and the man who finds himself wading and struggling in the midst of them may hope to get a footing on the high and dry land of liberty before he dies.
Such has been the progress of Russian experience from the time of Nicholas to that of Alexander II. The point is now reached when every department of the empire seems to be in disorder, and every interest in a state of ruin. It must be so, sooner or later; and it is our fortune to see it. There must be many men now living who will see what comes of it,—whether Russia is capable of remaining a European empire on European terms. If not, it must betake itself to Asia, where, by its comparative enlightenment, it deserves a great career.
But the European career must be also possible where there is a Head of the empire who has, however fitfully, encouraged aspirations after liberty, and where the suspicions of the authorities take the direction of constitutional organisation. Something must be done with the higher element which sometimes blazes out and sometimes is hidden, but which has never yet been extinguished. At present, there is no corn in the granaries of the Southern ports, because the nobles have little to send, and nobody to trust it to; and nobody has any money with which to buy it. There is no traffic on the Steppe roads; no echo of axe or wain in the woods; no buzz of bargaining in the bazaars; no harvest singing in the fields. There is instead the roar of the flames in the market-place, and the clang when the church bells fall from the steeple. The peasant stands idle in his weedy plot, refusing to strike his spade in while rent is demanded for it: and if he and his household are out late under the summer twilight, it is not to load the last sheaves, but to watch the red glare on the horizon, which tells what is doing in a distant commune. In some places people gather to see the rarity of a small coin,—such as their pockets used to be full of: in others, shippers are laying up their vessels, dreading to find them riddled by “the worm” next season; and elsewhere, the contractors are stopping the railway works, because there is no money to be had. Everybody seems to be turned idle except the soldiers; and they are marching and clattering their arms everywhere; yet every soldier is looked at with misgiving by the Government. The citizens are silent in their own homes; their wives look wistfully in their faces, while praising their country and social ways to all strangers, to governess, visitors, and every one who may be a spy. The children are under a chill of terror, and have hobgoblin notions of Secret Societies. Amidst all these miseries there is something stirring which must be liberty in some form or other; and we catch glimpses here and there of the shape of constitutionalism. Is there anything that we or anybody can do towards clearing away the miseries, and establishing the good which they are ushering in?
