nothing every principle of resistance to the religion of authority in this double shape, to impose a system of increasing restriction upon every other country, to make all the States of Europe its satellites, and to exert upon the Churches of the West a sort of pressure like that under which Lutherans and Roman Catholics upon the Russian territories now groan. Let Kamakoff tell us once more what he thinks of his country's mission; and be it remembered, the following little poem, like the preceding, was published before the war, and before the negotiations which issued in the war. It is not the language of a moment of excitement, but an expression of Russian feeling in its settled and permanent state.

"Land with the crown upon thy brow, land of unbending steel! thy flatterers tell thee to be proud; for with thy sword thou hast conquered half the world. There are no bounds to thy dominion; and Fortune, like a slave of thy will, hastens to obey thy supreme behests. Lovely are the ornaments of thy steppes; the summits of thy mountains rise to heaven, and thy lakes are like seas. Believe them not; heed them not; be not proud! What though the deep waters of thy rivers are like the blue waters of the sea, the sides of thy mountains full of precious stones, and the soil of thy steppes fertile in harvests? what though before thy sovereign grandeur the nations lower their eyes with fear, and thy seas with eternal roar chant thee a hymn of glory? what though thy thunders have scattered all around a storm of blood? Be not proud of all this power, of all this glory, of all this nothingness. Rome, the great Queen of the Seven Hills, was yet more formidable than thou art; Rome, that realized chimera of iron might and savage will. And that was all-powerful, too, the sword that glittered in the hands of the Tartar; and the Queen of the Western Seas was once buried in heaps of gold: and now where is Rome? where are the Mongols? And Albion, trembling over the abyss open before her, forges impotent snares, smothering in her bosom the cry, forerunner of her death. Every spirit of presumption is unfruitful; gold is not sure; steel is brittle; there is nothing strong in the world but holy ideas; there is nothing powerful but the hand lifted in prayer; and thy peculiar heritage, thy mission, the lot determined for thee by the hand of God, is to preserve for the world the wealth of great sacrifices and pure works; to preserve the holy brotherhood of nations, the life-giving urn of love, the treasures of ardent faith, truth, and bloodless justice. All that sanctifies the spirit is thine; all that makes the voice of Heaven be heard, and every thing that hides in itself the germ of the future. O, remember thy high calling; awaken the past within thine heart, and interrogate in it the spirit of life which is mysteriously hidden there. Incline thine ear to that voice, and, infolding all nations in an embrace of love, tell them the mystery of liberty, and shed abroad upon them the rays of faith. It is then that, clothed with wondrous glory, thou shalt lift thee above the sons of earth, as rises the azure vault of heaven, the transparent dwelling of the Most High."

True Import of Russian Aspirations.

127

If those words really meant what they say, and if they were true, God forbid that the armies of England should be any longer marshalled against the eagle of Russia. But we know that the aggression against Turkey is no generous unselfish crusade, bringing with it the boon of liberty, prosperity, and moral elevation to degraded populations: it would first condemn those populations to hopeless slavery, and then use them as instruments to enslave others. The very word "slave" is a corruption of "Sclavonian," a remembrance of the time when our Saxon ancestors in their native forests made captives of the neighbouring race, to serve as hewers of wood and drawers of water; and now, though the etymology were forgotten and the practice reversed, a Sclavonized world would still be synonymous with a world enslaved. The glowing language of the poet, and the fair pretensions of the diplomatist, translated into realities, mean the setting up the throne of paternal government over the world, and the putting it in the power of one of the lowest, most mechanical forms of sacramental religion, to paralyse and stifle its worthier rivals,-at least, as far as political supremacy would enable it to do so; and the Russian believes political supremacy to be every thing in religion. If the Western Powers were to be driven out of the East, or were to consume their strength in useless efforts, until they were obliged to yield Turkey to the spoiler, doubtless the result would not yet be the sending Grand Dukes to reign in Paris and in London; but it would be the reducing us to the condition of subserviency in which Sweden and Denmark are now. Doubtless, the head of the Orthodox Church would issue no ukase commanding the Roman Catholics of France, or the Protestants of England, to become members of the Oriental communion; but he would send home their Missionaries, arrest all proselytism in distant lands, bring into existence in both countries, by all possible means, a party sympathizing with the peculiarities of the Greek system, and make that party paramount in Church and State. We are not merely fighting for Turkey. We are not merely fighting for India; though assuredly India would follow Turkey. We are fighting for our dearest liberties at home, and for all the results of the long providential education of our fathers, the blessings of Protestant Anglo-Saxon civilization.

In our modern world, the house of Austria was the first to cherish a purpose of universal dominion; Louis XIV. came next, then Napoleon, and lastly the late Emperor of Russia. England, except for a moment of hesitation on the part of Henry VIII., and an interval of treason under Charles II., has always belonged to the party of resistance. Now, it is a fact, the significance of which ought not to be overlooked, that in this fourth and present attempt alone the aggressive people are, to a full extent, the accomplices of their Sovereign.

Charles V., Louis XIV., and Napoleon were, indeed, sustained by the high spirit of the Spanish and French nations, by their soldierly feeling of military honour, and by the enthusiasm which their persons excited; Philip II. and Louis XIV. found no inconsiderable auxiliary in religious bigotry: but none of those Princes were really representatives of a national cause, which would have existed altogether independently of their personal ambition. None of them could claim to be the exclusive organ of a great religious interest. We do not mean to deny the intense and natural rivalry which existed between England and Spain in the sixteenth century, between England and France at the close of the seventeenth; but, to make one of the cases parallel, in addition to the contest between England and Spain for the empire of the seas, we should have to suppose the Moors still in the south of Spain, English armies coming to the assistance of Cordova and Granada; and not only so, but Spain should be the only Catholic power, and its Prince the head of the Catholic Church. It is evident that had such circumstances as these existed, Philip II. would have been supported by his people much more strenuously than he really was. We think it may be said without fear of contradiction, that the ambition of the House of Romanoff (since this name is given by courtesy to the family of Holstein-Gottorp) is sustained by the national feelings, the long-cherished passions, the religious sympathies, and the blood-relationships of a great people, in a way in which the ambition of no other would-be conqueror ever was sustained, and that people the most numerous that ever spoke the same language, at least within the pale of Christian civilization. Those Scythians, of whom Thucydides said, that if they were ever united under one Chief, and of the same mind, no power of either Europe or Asia could resist them,-the far greater part of them are united under one Chief; and they are of the same mind, that mind antagonistic to every thing that characterizes Englishmen; and they have staked their all upon a mighty struggle for supremacy. Would that the whole import of the struggle were understood in every one of our English homes, and in every soldier's tent! The Government has been bitterly reproached with its slowness at first to believe that war was certain, and its slowness ever since to understand the magnitude of the obstacles opposed to its undertakings; but we fear that the charge of levity and improvidence can be urged against the people as well as the Government, and that neither the greatness of the danger, nor the vital importance of the interests at stake, are sufficiently understood amongst us. Those who have felt that the war was unavoidable are but imperfectly alive to our national responsibilities; and how many have yet to learn that it was unavoidable!

Russia's Strength and counterbalancing Weakness. 129

Russia has grown up comparatively unknown among the nations. The last few generations have been conscious of her increasing power, but never studied her character; and so her towering ambition and dangerous fanaticism have taken us by surprise. We can hardly believe in the existence of feelings to which our eyes were shut but yesterday, though they are the growth of centuries, and though they concern us so deeply. In much the same way the friends of Caesar's childhood, or Napoleon's, were astonished at the presumptuous purposes of their late companion. Now we have amongst us, both in and out of the House of Commons, good easy men, sleek and satisfied, whose ambition is as moderate as their religion, and who have so little themselves of the spirit of either Cæsar or Peter the Hermit, that they cannot understand what we have to fear from conqueror or crusader. And we have others who have trifled with the very principles that animate Russia, materialists in politics and in religion, worshippers of authority in every sphere, who have trained themselves into a morbid appetite for practices such as those which make the religion of the Russian. In this great crisis England cannot expect such men to do their duty. They are not worthy to lift her banner, and to fight for the liberties of future ages. Not that they consciously sympathize with Russia; there is too much patriotism in every English bosom for that; but theirs is the patriotism of instinct, not that of principle. They would sympathize with Russia, if any other country than their own were engaged in the quarrel. The tone of the ultra-Churchmen in Germany would be that of the same party in England, if they were not held back by a generous prejudice in favour of the cause of their native land.

There exists throughout all nature a tendency to equilibrium. Carnivorous animals are placed in such conditions as hinder the total destruction of the species on which they live: processes, the excess of which would be injurious, are corrected by their own effects; thus heat is disengaged by freezing substances, and absorbed by thawing. We are persuaded that the devout student of the ways of God can trace similar arrangements in the relations of Empires; and, when some Colossus threatens the repose and safety of other nations, it will be found to have clay mingled with its iron, elements of weakness inseparable from and counteracting the forces which it is tempted to abuse. Happily for the world, this is, to a prodigious extent, the case with Russia. Weighed down by the despotism of ages, its energies and spirit of enterprise remain feeble; and, while it has the advantage of combining for its aggressive purposes conditions which rarely meet,-the most absolute centralization of power, and a very decided hereditary bent of the national mind, -the former of those conditions has paralysed the latter; the

rough rider has rendered the steed unable to bear him; neither the resources nor the public spirit of the nation can be tasked like those of a free people. Again, religion has lent its sanctions, and aroused what is generally the most formidable of all influences, to sustain the ambition of both Prince and people; but then the religion is so external to the man, such a system of mere puerile practices and gestures, that it seems incapable of engendering so vigorous a fanaticism as might be feared. We have quoted the number of dissenters, and the discussions of the Kremlin, as proofs of the interest the mujik takes in religious subjects; but it must not be forgotten that one of the chief matters in dispute is, whether the Priest's benediction should be bestowed with two fingers, or with three. If the Greek Church had sufficient hold of the passions and imagination to produce the extreme fiery zeal which has sometimes been exhibited by other communities, it certainly would have been more of a persecuting Church; for there is nothing in its principles to the contrary. Yet, except some cruelties perpetrated upon the Jews at the close of the fifteenth century, under the direction of an Archbishop of Novogorod, there is no example of fervid proselytism emanating from either the Clergy or the people; every thing of this kind, down to the present oppressive restrictions on Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, is to be exclusively attributed to the Government; the active bigotry of the Orthodox Church is concentrated in the secular arm. Of course Russians generally believe their Church to be the only faithful one, approve the intolerant measures and ambitious policy of the Czar, and are ready to support them with stubborn courage; but the impulse of the predestined conqueror is wanting; there is nothing of the mighty wind that breaks the rocks, and rends the mountains. The present attempt upon the liberties of Europe is formidable beyond the conceptions of the unthinking, but it is not irresistible.

At a moment when a new theocracy undertakes to establish its universal supremacy by the sword, it is interesting to see what both its advocates and its adversaries have to say, when they have recourse to the milder weapons of persuasion. A longdormant controversy, and one which was never very active on the side of the Greek Church, has been awakened by the present state of things. A German Jesuit, Jaeger, has recently published a history of the Patriarch Photius, and of the Greek Schism, from the Roman Catholic point of view. Our readers may see an English account of Russo-Greek image-worship, in a late reprint of Calvin's admirable Treatise upon Relics. The two French tracts, the titles of which we have transcribed, are pleas addressed by earnest Russians, one to Roman Catholics, the other to members of the Western communions in general. The first, translated by Popovitski from the anonymous original,