It may be an emulous aspiration which may certainly find pardon where it cannot have praise. It is not unworthy of a nation just peering from the rigid soil of barbarism into the light and air of civilization, to feel a growing appetite for dignified and elevating commerce. Or if this seems too high for the masses of Russia, we may allow it in their sovereigns, who lead them in progress as they rule them in power, while they cherish the policy of enlarging the commercial advantages of the empire.

But no sound law of national morality can justify the Czar in his overbearing assault on Turkey for his own advantage. Yet there are possible extenuations even of such wrong in some cases, in which the powerful seek their own advantage from the weak. And Nicholas might be suspected of an easy conscience in his encroachments, since what he would take from Turkey might be reckoned so much relief from the Mahomedan clog on the progress of Christian Europe, and might better serve, in his hands, the interests of mankind.

Like most Christian people acquainted with the case, he, doubtless considered the Ottoman Empire as destined to destruction and not to reform, and thought it due to himself that, at the crisis of its dissolution, the signal should come from himself, and that he should claim a leader's share of the spoil. He could thus consider himself as laying his strong hand on the dissolving remains of an effete, semi-savage, anti-christian Empire, a barrier to the progress, and a stench in the nostrils of civilization, awaiting only the first assailant in order to become a prey, and reeking with the blood of Christian victims to Moslem intolerance and cruelty. And his opening a path for his commercial enterprise through the Ottoman dominions, may have seemed to him a benefit to benighted and fanatical Turkey herself.

We do not insist on these concessions for the autocrat, but only suggest them as belonging to a charitable view of his policy, the justice of which may be known only to the Searcher of hearts. We must consider them the more clearly due, if, as we have seen it intimated on high authority, he had sounded members of the British cabinet, found their sympathies, as he supposed, rather with him than with Turkey, and thought himself encouraged to expect their connivance if not their complicity; while the settled and uniform public sentiment in Britain, as well as in other countries, is known to have long held the Ottoman dominion as worthless and hopeless for any purposes of Christian civilization. All this he well understood; and in his trial at the bar of national morality, for assailing the abstract rights of what all considered a doomed and a falling power, he is entitled to the benefit of these palliations. It is known of the late Emperor of the Russias, that, though the arbitrary sovereign of an uncultivated people, he was himself endowed with many of the higher gifts of civilization; that he consulted the comfort and improvement of the millions for whose well

being he was so heavily responsible; that he was earnestly religious in his way, and conscientiously lamented the grievances of those members of his venerated church who were suffering Mohammedan insult and violence by virtue of Ottoman laws; and that with most Christian people, he heartily denounced the brutish power, which prowled between his southern border and the ocean, as a shame and a pest to Europe, and an abomination to God. And all may honor his inherited zeal for direct and safe access to the commercial thoroughfare of nations, as worthy of a wise and generous solicitude for the southern quarter of his dominions, the most accessible, salubrious, productive, and improvable of the whole.

But he failed. His miscalculation was fatal; yet none could discern his mistake till the event began to be unfolded. He did not stumble through blind or reckless disregard for any conscientious scruples of his western rivals: but he mistook their views of his own ulterior aim. He ventured too much upon their confidence in his own political uprightness, and that of his posterity, when he presumed that the jealous and mighty preservers of the balance of power in the Old World, would let him obtrude the formidable front of his impulsive and invincible despotism any farther towards the centre of Europe. He thought of his harmless designs for his own advantage; they, of his gigantic power; and it was a compliment to the growing strength of Russia, with no other moral imputations than lie against mankind at large, when the two great powers of western Europe, natural enemies of one another, became friends through fear of her, and joined their arms against her. This the Czar did not foresee. He did not think himself bound to suspect that his seeking a commercial advantage by a trivial aggression upon Turkish barbarism and corruption, which lay before him like the dog in the manger, would frighten France and England out of their mutual hatred into loving alliance against him.

The result has settled, for a long time, the position of the Russian despotism in Europe. It reminds the Emperor of his mission. He has territory enough for five times the present millions of his people. His commercial facilities for the south of his empire are improved by the peace; since his free passage through the Black Sea to the ocean, is guarded from Turkish annoyance by all the contracting powers. The resources of his empire are inexhaustible. His people are awaking to modern improvements. He has now a significant and imperious expression of European sentiment on his true position in the family of nations, and must now seek the elevation of his people by internal means. The civilized world is now electrified throughout by progressive discoveries and inventions, applying the natural forces to the purposes of human life. Russia has proved herself alive to such impulse by unexpected demonstrations of military science and art in the late sanguinary conflict. She is now retiring to cherish industry and the arts of peace. She must carry out her vast scheme of general education, and reform

her system of religious culture. She should provide for the gradual adaptation of her government to the rising qualifications of her people. She is favoured with a sovereign predisposed to peace, enlightened in his views of government, and sincerely concerned for the highest good of his subjects. She has a new and rising class, composed of free cultivators of the soil; the nucleus of a most important middle class between the nobles and the serfs; the result of a system of emancipation, instituted by the former Alexander, continued by Nicholas, and destined, we hope, to work great social melioration under the enlightened and mild administration of Alexander the Second. Already is she displaying her energy in vast appropriations for creating a commercial navy. And now, while inviting foreign genius to her bosom, and filling her workshops with mechanical skill, let her also imbibe freely the Protestant religious life of other Christian nations, and diffuse through her families, schools, and church, more of the living power of Christianity. By such a course, we might anticipate for Russia greater progress from her present standing, during the next fifty years, than for any other nations from theirs.

II. Turning now to our powerful and venerated mother country, we find her, in the alliance with France, in the war itself, and the negotiations for peace, holding a position unexpected from her recent history, and uncongenial to her general spirit. So lately the head and front of a victorious alliance against the first Napoleon, she now astonishes the world by joining hands with the pretended heir of his power and name;-a man who carries the remembrance of Waterloo and St. Helena in the bottom of an aggrieved and a resentful heart, and watches his opportunity to retort the humiliation. The first Napoleon advised England never to fight on the land; for her element was the sea, and she could never be a nation of soldiers. The present Napoleon takes her with him to the war; and all at once her splendid and mighty navy goes out of use; the war is suddenly transferred from the water to the land; the leading counsel in the siege and the assaults is not hers; the proposal of her chief to attack Sebastopol at a most favourable juncture is rejected; and in the final sally, the English are led to slaughter in the trench before the Redan, while the Malakoff, with the honours of the day, falls to the French. We strongly suspect there was, in those proceedings, a wily hand, whose motions have not yet all come to light.

Nor did England hold her due place in the negotiations for peace. Her sense of dignity could feel no pleasure in having the place of of meeting determined almost by the arbitrary choice of a Bonapartan sovereign, and fixed at the footstool of his throne, to be adorned throughout by illustrations of his imperial magnificence. The time was inauspicious for her glory. She must lay off her armour just as she was putting it on. The arm of her great power was just raised for some decisive exploit, and she must yield her

opportunity. Her soldiers were firm and brave in battle, patient in destitution and disease, and earned more repute for the physical vigour and dauntless courage of her people, than for the promptness and efficiency of her government. They fought well; but their bravery had as yet gained victories only for France. In the deliberations of the Congress, she did not rise above the most promiscuous equality among the assembled powers. On the whole, it stains the pride of our Anglo-Saxon glory, that in the conduct and the conclusion of that stupendous expedition, the part of our mother country was not more like that of a leader.

The profits of the war for England must consist of remoter and less imposing consequences than an increase of martial renown, and of political ascendency in Europe. Her noblest mission is not to be fulfilled by war. Her national tastes and manners, and even her politics, have not the martial temper. With her zeal for literature, science, and the lucrative and elevating arts of peace, it must ever cost her more to buy up soldiers from her scenes of intellectual dignity, and of skilful profitable industry, than she has to gain by war; especially while every drop of her surplus population drains so easily to this country. She is undoubtedly, at present, the most powerful nation of the world; yet there is no other nation to whom war must be so costly.

Yoked as she was with the military genius and energy of France, she has felt her inequality. She has detected a part of her social infirmity in keeping the stations of honourable public service accessible to the imbecility of hereditary opulence and rank. She has less to fear for the safety of her Eastern possessions, after so effectual a check on the aggressive progress of Russia. She may secure, for a time, an important extension of her trade. Should she maintain friendly relations with France, there is no foretelling the vast economical advantages to England from intimacy with that powerful and progressive nation. She has the satisfaction of having fought successfully for the right in resisting the advance of an overshadowing despotism; though we question her claim to the merit of any conscientious jealousy for the endangered rights of Turkey. And we freely add, that this prodigious application of force and expenditure by the government and people of England, reveals anew the wonderful vitality of the British Constitution. With a debt of a thousand millions sterling, she can plunge into new and indefinite liabilities, with unsuspected credit, with scarcely the feeling of incumbrance, and, as it were, with the confidence of boundless resources. Her productive industry, the lordly affluence of her merchants, her extending possessions and exorbitant gains in the East, supply her exhaustless revenue; while her political stability insures the government credit for private capital at home and abroad. If England has gained little lustre to her arms from the war, she has proved anew her resources for exerting a social civilizing power upon the world.

III. Among the late antagonists of Russia, a striking and peculiar prominence has been held by France. The personal interests and aims of Napoleon the Third evidently pointed with great decision and urgency towards a European movement in which he might take a leading part. Here was an adventure worthy of his family and of his own ambition. It opened a field for the military spirit of the French. It would enable the Emperor to gain time and other advantages against some political tendencies in his empire, and to play a game for reputation at home and abroad; while he might also expect to share in whatever advantage might accrue to Europe from the check and humiliation of Russia.

His personal part in the conflict was that of a leader. There even went a rumor, without being anywhere rejected as improbable, that he had taken, by consent of England, the chief command in the Crimea, and that he had it in mind to go in person to the scene of war. His alliance with England was a master stroke of policy. His faithful adherence to the alliance raised his reputation for political morality. He gained the credit of having fought for Europe, and not against her; and he succeeded to admiration in turning every decisive movement in the war to the advantage of himself and France. If Providence has destined that remarkable man to a long and prosperous career, his signal success in this movement will work powerfully to that end. No other monarch of modern times has held an ascendency in Europe greater than his at this moment. The world now waits, with lively interest and suspense, the further unfolding of the Divine purposes respecting that extraordinary man.

Concerning his personal character and habits, we have been partially relieved by reliable testimony relating to his deportment in private life. As to his abilities, it is enough that from his first appearance on the political stage of France, after his election to the Legislative Chamber, every step of his ascent to the imperial throne and to his present influence in Europe, may be traced as infallibly to his personal endowments of sagacity, sound judgment, energy, and decision, as any victory of the First Napoleon to his superior military genius. Of his political morality we may not be competent to judge. He broke his oath to maintain the Constitution as President of the Republic; but if France could not continue a Republic, and he believed it to be so, and believed himself able to reform the government, to the great advantage of his country, he must be judged by those principles which justify revolutions. He ventured at his peril, fearfully responsible to God and man. The Constitution could not bind beyond its own existence; and when he proposed to the nation to drop the Constitution, and obtained consent thereto, his oath was void. His open appeal to the people at every step evinced his sagacity and prudence, and will be one of the strong roots to support and nourish his power, as long as it lives. His usurpation was successful, and accomplished at an expense, for