PRESENT ASPECT OF RUSSIA.

By Rev. John S. C. Abbott.

            There is no subject which now excites a deeper interest in England, and indeed with all thinking men throughout the continent of Europe, than what is there called the Eastern Question. Russia and England are now playing as important a political game as ever excited the eastern hemisphere. Russia, with an ambition which knows no bounds, with resources almost inexhaustible, and secret policy intriguing at every court in Europe, seeks to extend her territory over all of central Asia, and to outvie ancient Rome in the extent of her dominions and in the majesty of her power.

            England trembles at the gigantic acquisitions of her great northern rival. She sees, with a degree of dread which she can neither appease nor conceal, the Russian power crowding closer and closer upon her East Indian possessions, and contemplates with irrepressible anxiety the rapidly increasing navy of the autocrat, threatening soon to supersede her in her ancient sovereignty of the seas. To thwart the designs of Russia is now the great object of English diplomacy. And there is at the present time a contest going on between the two powers, which, though it has excited but little attention on this side of the Atlantic, is an all engrossing subject of interest in every cabinet of Europe.

            The Russian dominions now compose about one seventh of the habitable globe, extending from the Baltic Sea, across the whole breadth of Europe and of Asia, to Behring’s Straits; and from the eternal ices of the northern pole to the sunny clime of the pomegranate and the fig. The Emperor Nicholas reigns with unbounded sway over seventy millions of the human family; a population considerably exceeding that of England, France, and the United States combined. He has a militia of eighteen millions of well armed and respectably disciplined men. He has a standing army of highly disciplined troops, many of them veterans in the hardships and horrors of war, consisting of one million of men, two hundred thousand of these being cavalry, perhaps unsurpassed by any other body of mounted troops in the world. His navy consisting of forty or fifty ships of the line, with frigates, sloops, floating batteries, and gunboats almost without number, is now manned by about sixty thousand men, daily exercised in all the arts of war. And the shores of the Euxine and the Baltic incessantly resound with the blows of the ship carpenter, as month after month, new ships are launched upon their waters. The annual revenue of the Emperor is about fifty millions of dollars. Such is the gigantic power now over-shadowing the north of Europe, and apparently aiming at the sovereignty of the world.

            The Emperor Nicholas is about 45 years of age, in the very prime of his intellectual and physical vigour. He is, in all respects, one of the most extraordinary men on the busy stage of life. It is said that he is in form and feature one of the handsomest men on the continent of Europe. Lord Londonderry, who not long ago returned from a visit to his court, says that if all the seventy millions who compose the subjects of the Emperor of Russia, were assembled together, Nicholas is the one, who, from his commanding figure, his symmetrical and intellectual features, and his princely bearing, would be selected from them all, as formed by the God of nature for their chieftain. His mind is of the highest order, uniting in that wonderful combination which made Napoleon the master-spirit of his age, the comprehensiveness of the man of genius, with the practical man’s minutest acquaintance with details. He is alike at home everywhere—in the army, in the navy, in the cabinet. The diplomatic corps is, by general consent, the ablest in Europe. In England, as in America, a man is appointed to an important mission, not because he is the most suitable man, but because there are certain interests which must be conciliated, or particular friends who must be rewarded. But Nicholas feels none of these trammels. He reigns in unlimited despotism. Dukes and Barons are nothing to him. He cares not who is a man’s father, or where he was born. Looking simply at the qualifications of the individuals selected as the instruments of his government, he has gathered around him from all the nations of Europe the most brilliant and comprehensive talent, and no cabinet in the eastern hemisphere is probably equal to the associated diplomatists of Nicholas.

            The favourite plan of Russia, which has never for a moment been lost sight of since first projected by the dissolute and ambitious Catharine, is to found universal dominion by the monopoly of the commerce between Europe and Asia. To do this, she must first so extend and strengthen her central power as to have nothing to fear from the other nations of Europe. She must so enlarge and perfect her navy as to wrest from the hands of Great Britain the sceptre of the ocean; and she must subjugate Turkey, and make Constantinople her third capital, and fortify Gibraltar’s rock at the Dardanelles.

            Towards the accomplishment of these projects she is advancing in her career triumphantly, rapidly, and apparently resistless. By diplomatic intrigue and the power of her armies, Russia has succeeded in bringing a large portion of the empire of Poland under her control. The Poles manifested some uneasiness under the yoke, and made an effort to regain their ancient independence. The imperial autocrat poured into the ill-fated territory his resistless armies. They swept over Poland with hurricane fury. One wild shriek vibrated upon the ear of Europe, so deep and piercing that it even passed the Atlantic wave and rolled along our shores—and Poland was no more. Her armies were massacred. Her Nobles were driven into Siberian exile. Her cities and villages became the property of Russia. Her population of twenty millions of inhabitants were transformed into the subjects of the grasping conqueror, to swell his armies and to fight his battles; and her annual revenue of twenty millions of dollars was emptied into his overflowing treasury.

            The empire of Sweden lines the western shore of the Baltic Sea. It would be convenient for Nicholas to have possession of the whole coast. It is said that Russian gold has already bought up the influence of her leading Nobles and Statesmen. And there is now in Sweden a powerful party, even with the King himself at their head, who openly advocate the annexation of their territory to the powerful empire upon whose border they lie. They say it is far better for them to become assimilated with this majestic nation, to share its glory and power, than to be an independent but feeble empire, which may at any moment be inundated with Russian troops. Thus Sweden virtually belongs to Russia. Her monarch is but the viceroy of Nicholas, to do his bidding in the furtherance of all his plans.

            And Norway, a narrow strip of land washed by the German Ocean, is left unmolested, simply because she is not worth possessing. Her cold and cheerless waste, inhabited by a population of but about a million, without a navy and with hardly the shadow of an army, only add to the interior strength of that powerful monarch, who can fill her whole territory with Russian subjects whenever it shall be his will. Thus the stormy waves of the German Ocean are the only real limits to the power of Nicholas on the west.

            Let us now turn to the east, and note the acquisitions of this gigantic empire in that direction. There is a large promontory jutting into the Black Sea from the north, called Crimea. The possession of this promontory is important to any power that would control the commerce of the Black Sea. Turkey owned it. Russia wanted it. She took it. And when Turkey remonstrated, Nicholas very significantly pointed to his guns and his troops, and advised the Sultan to keep quiet. Mahmoud took the hint, and exercised discretion, that “better part of valour.”

Sevastapool, on the southern shore of the Crimea, is now the naval depot of the Euxine fleet. Here an immense navy, manned by thirty thousand seamen, rides proudly, armed and provisioned, ready to unmoor, at a moment’s warning, for any expedition of aggrandisement. For many years Nicholas has had twelve thousand men constantly employed in throwing up fortifications around this important position. No assailant can now probably harm it. Said Captain Crawford, as he visited a few years ago the Russian fleet at Sevastapool, “It was a strange feeling that came over me, as an Englishman and an officer in the British navy, on finding myself at sea with six and twenty line of battle ships, manned with nearly thirty thousand men, and four months’ provision on board, knowing, as I do, that for the protection of the coasts of my own country, of our ports, of our mercantile shipping in the Baltic, the North Sea, and the Channel, we had but seven line of battle ships in a state of preparation, and those not fully manned. I confess that, confident as I felt of the superiority of my countrymen, I almost trembled for their preservation of the ancient sovereignty of the seas.”

On the eastern shores of the Black Sea, between her waves and the Caspian, lies Circassia, a wild and mountainous region, filled with gloomy ravines and inaccessible crags, where small bands of resolute men might bid defiance to a host. Amongst these defiles, for many ages, there has lived a brave and warlike race, famed for martial prowess and personal beauty, and for the spirit of indomitable independence. Russia having obtained undisputed possession of the western and northern shores of the Euxine, cast her eyes across the eastern shore, and resolved to subdue the warlike race which for ages had ranged these wilds in unconquered freedom. The Euxine fleet was all ready to transport the armies of the Emperor to the shores of Circassia. The plan was, however, found more difficult of achievement than was at first supposed. These hardy men and women fought bravely for their liberties. From the year 1828 to 1832, these distant solitudes resounded with the din of the most determined and murderous war. The explosion of Russian artillery rivalled the thunders of heaven, as they reverberated around the summits of the Circassians. Army after army were cut up in these Thermopolac fastnesses, but still new thousands were poured into the doomed country, till, at last, numbers and discipline triumphed and the brave Circassians were vanquished, and their country became, by right of might, a province of rapacious Russia; and now the Russian flag floats from almost every promontory of the Black Sea, and her fortresses frown in the strongest holds of the Caucasian mountains. —New York Evangelist.