RUSSIA. From the time of the Czar Peter, when it first emerged from obscurity to take a leading part in Continental affairs, to the present moment, its progress has been unbroken. Alone, of all other states, during that long period it has experienced no reverses, but constantly advanced in power, territory, and resources; for even the peace of Tilsit, which followed the disasters of Austerlitz and Friedland, was attended with an accession of territory. During that period it has successively swallowed up Courland and Livonia, Poland, Finland, the Crimea, the Ukraine, Wallachia, and Moldavia. Its southern frontier is now washed by the Danube; its eastern is within fifty leagues of Berlin and Vienna; its advanced ports in the Baltic are almost within sight of Stockholm; its south-eastern boundary, stretching far over the Caucasus, sweeps down to Erivan and the foot of Mount Ararat; Persia and Turkey are irrevocably subjected to its influence; a solemn treaty has given it the command of the Dardanelles; a subsidiary Muscovite force has visited Scutari, and rescued the Osmanlis from destruction; and the Sultan Mahmoud retains Constantinople only as the viceroy of the northern autocrat.

The politicians of the day assert that Russia will fall to pieces, and its power cease to be formidable to Western Europe or Central Asia. They never were more completely mistaken. Did Macedonia fall to pieces before it had subdued the Grecian commonwealths; or Persia before it had conquered the Assyrian monarchy; or the Goths and Vandals before they had subverted the Roman empire? It is the general pressure of the north upon the south, not the force of any single state, which is the weight that is to be apprehended; that pressure will not be lessened, but, on the contrary, greatly increased, if the vast Scythian tribes should separate into different empires. Though one Muscovite throne were to be established at St Petersburg, a second at Moscow, and a third at Constantinople, the general pressure of the Russian race upon the southern states of Europe and Asia would not be one whit diminished. Still the delight of a warmer climate, the riches of long-established civilisation, the fruits and wines of the south, the women of Italy or Circassia, would attract the brood of winter to the regions of the sun. The various tribes of the German race, the

Gothic and Vandal swarms, the Huns and the Ostrogoths, were engaged in fierce and constant hostility with each other; and it was generally defeat and pressure from behind which impelled them upon their southern neighbours; but that did not prevent them from bursting the barriers of the Danube and the Rhine, and overwhelming the civilisation, and wealth, and discipline, of the Roman empire. Such internal divisions only magnify the strength of the northern race by training them to the use of arms, and augmenting their military skill by constant exercise against each other; just as the long-continued internal wars of the European nations have established an irresistible superiority of their forces over those of the other quarters of the globe. In the end the weight of the north, thus matured, drawn forth, and disciplined, will ever be turned to the fields of southern conquest.

The moving power with these vast bodies of men is the lust of conquest, and a passion for southern enjoyment. Democracy is unheeded or unknown amongst them; if imported from foreign lands, it languishes and expires amidst the rigours of the climate. The energy and aspirations of men are concentrated on conquest-a passion more natural, more durable, more universal, than the democratic vigour of advanced civilisation. It speaks a language intelligible to the rudest of men, and rouses passions of universal vehemence. Great changes may take place in human affairs; but the time will never come when northern valour will not press on southern wealth, or refined corruption not require the renovating influence of indigent regeneration.

This, then, is the other great moving power which, in these days of transition, is changing the destinies of mankind. Rapid as is the growth of the British race in America, it is not more rapid than that of the Russian in Europe and Asia. Fifty millions of men now furnish recruits to the Muscovite standards; but their race doubles in every half century; and before the year 1900, one hundred millions of men will be ready to pour from the frozen plains of Scythia on the plains of central Asia and southern Europe. Occasional events may check, or for a while turn aside the wave; but its ultimate progress in these directions is certain and irresistible. Before two centuries are over, Mahometanism will be banished from Turkey, Asia Minor, and Persia, and a

hundred millions of Christians will be settled in the regions now desolated by the standards of the Prophet. Their advance is as swift, as unceasing, as that of the British race to the rocky belt of Western America. M. de Tocqueville has pointed out this marvellous coincidence in the tendency of the progress of the two greatest nations now on the earth.

"There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world, which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points, I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place among the nations; and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

"All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and only to be charged with the maintenance of their power; but these are still in the act of growth: all the others are stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these are proceeding with ease and with celerity along a path to which the human eye can assign no term. The American struggles against the natural obstacles which oppose him; the adversaries of the Russian are men: the former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilisation with all its weapons and its arts: the conquests of the one are therefore gained by the ploughshare; those of the other by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the citizens; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm; the principal instrument of the former is freedom, of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe."

There is something solemn, and evidently Providential, in this ceaseless advance of the lords of the earth and the sea into the desert regions of the earth. The hand of Almighty Power is distinctly visible, not only in the unbroken advance of both on their respective elements, but in the evident adaptation of the passions, habits, and government of each to the ends for which they were severally destined in the designs of nature. Could Russian conquest have ever peopled the dark and untrodden forests of North America, or the desert Savannas of Australasia? Could the passions and the desires of the North have ever led them into the abode of the beaver and the buffalo? Never for aught that their passions could have done, these regions must have remained in primeval solitude and silence to the end of time. Could English democracy ever have penetrated the half-peopled, half-desert regions of Asia, and Christian civilisation, spreading in peaceful activity, have supplanted the Crescent in the original seats of the human race?

Never; the isolated colonist, with his axe and his Bible, would have been swept away by the Mameluke or the Spahi, and civilisation, in its peaceful guise, would have perished under the squadrons of the Crescent. For aught that democracy could have done for Central Asia, it must have remained the abode of anarchy and misrule to the end of human existence. But peaceful Christianity, urged on by democratic passions, pierced the primeval solitude of the American forests and warlike Christianity, stimulated by northern conquest, was fitted to subdue Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The Bible and the printing-press converted the wilderness of North America into the abode of Christian millions; the Muscovite battalions, marching under the standard of the Cross, subjugated the already peopled regions of the Mussulman faith. Not without reason, then, did the British navy and the Russian army emerge triumphant from the desperate strife of the French Revolution; for on the victory of each depended the destinies of half the globe.

Democratic institutions will not, and cannot, exist permanently in North America. The frightful anarchy which has prevailed in the southern states, since the great interests dependent on slave emancipation were brought into jeopardy; the irresistible sway of the majority, and the rapid tendency of that majority to deeds of atrocity and blood; the increasing jealousy, on mercantile grounds, of the northern and southern states-all demonstrate that the Union cannot permanently hold together, and that the innumerable millions of the Anglo-American race must be divided into separate states, like the descendants of the Gothic conquerors of Europe. Out of this second great settlement of mankind will arise separate kingdoms, and interests, and passions, as out of the first. But democratic habits and desires will still prevail; and long after necessity and the passions of an advanced stage of civilisation have established firm and aristocratic governments, founded on the sway of property in the old states, republican ambition and jealousy will not cease to impel millions into the great wave that approaches the Rocky Mountains. Democratic ideas will not be moderated in the New World, till they have performed their destined end, and brought the Christian race to the shores of the Pacific.

Arbitrary institutions will not for ever prevail in the Russian empire. As successive provinces and kingdoms are added to their vast dominions as their sway extends over the regions of the south, the abode of wealth and longestablished civilisation, the passion for conquest will expire. Satiety will extinguish this as it does all other desires. With the acquisition of wealth, and the settlement in fixed abodes, the desire of protection from arbitrary power will spring up, and the passion of freedom will arise as it did in Greece, Italy, and modern Europe. Free institutions will ultimately appear in the realms conquered_by Muscovite, as they did in those won by Gothic valour. But the passions and desires of an earlier stage of existence will long agitate the millions of the Russo-Asiatic race; and after democratic desires have arisen, and free institutions exist in its oldest provinces, the wave of northern conquest will still be pressed on by semi-barbarous hordes from its remoter dominions. Freedom will gradually arise out of security and repose; but the fever of conquest will not be finally extinguished till it has performed its destined mission, and the standards of the Cross are brought down to the Indian Ocean.

The French Revolution was the greatest and the most stupendous event of modern times; it is from the throes consequent on its explosion that all the subsequent changes in human affairs have arisen. It sprang up in the spirit of infidelity; it was early steeped in crime; it reached the unparalleled height of general atheism, and shook all the thrones of the world by the fiery passions which it awakened. What was the final result of this second revolt of Lucifer, the Prince of the Morning? Was it that a great and durable impression on human affairs was made by the infidel race? Was St Michael at last chained by the demon ? No! it was overruled by Almighty Power; on either side it found the brazen walls which it could not pass; it sank in the conflict, and ceased to have any farther direct influence on human affairs. In defiance of all its efforts, the British navy and the Russian army rose invincible above its arms; the champions of Christianity in the East and the leaders of religious freedom in the West came forth, like giants refreshed with wine, from the