"Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth."—JESUS.

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Events of the day lend a deep interest to works like this of M. le Duc. Constantinople is now the scene of the European drama. The hostile powers of the earth, moral and physical, are there in presence; and while the ink is drying on the paper on which we write, it is possible that artillery may have there superseded reason and logic with its more arbitrary arguments. Nevertheless, so far as the topics here treated are political, we do not meddle with them: —we are content to gather from such works a crop of those anecdotes which have a certain social or historical importance.

It will surprise no one who has read history that the Russian should yearn for the possession of Constantinople. "Whilst we do not possess the Dardanelles, we are without the key of the house," said the Emperor Alexander. This is the argument—the political reason—the state necessity for the long-pursued policy of the Muscovite Caesars. But there is something under this, and older than the Romanoffs themselves—the instinctive turning of the human race towards the South—the pressure of the population at all times from the icy regions of the North, from snow field, sandy waste and dismal swamp, towards sunlit hills, rich plains, the vineyard, the orange grove, blue air and glancing waters. The form of the emigration changes—the desire of change remains. In one age, a nomadic tribe, carrying its household gods, driving its cattle on before, comes down from the great Steppes. Ages later, it is a Ukraine horde, mounted and armed, that rolls down the corn-lands of the Crimea, and dashes itself like a tide against the rocky barriers of the Caucasus, falling back in broken powerless wavelets. Still farther down, the tribe, the horde, is organised, and officered after European modes. Its march is announced by diplomatic agents, and its advances celebrated by religious rites. But it is nevertheless the old irruption—forced by the old causes. The frost-bitten citizen of St. Petersburg dreams of the gorgeous climate of Constantinople, as the Goth in his forest dreamed of Italian vine gardens; the luxuries of Pera, the sunlit shores of the Bosphorus, have the same power on the imagination of the Russian woman as the reports of the surpassing pomp and glitter of imperial life had on the fancy of Vandal savages striving with arid nature for a scanty subsistence.

But while Europe recognises in this yearning of the Northmen for a greener and softer possession on the earth’s surface a law of history, it also recognises as another law, equally derived from history, the necessity for controlling, driving back this tide of southward invasion. In each of the long series of emigrations from the steppe, the marsh country and the forest, Europe has found a grave calamity. Every advance has been a blow to art, letters, and civilisation. Now and then a barbarian horde has carried with it the germs of new ideas—of beautiful social laws—as, for instance, the German tribes, who brought with them the instinct of personal liberty and the chivalries of sex. But the barbarians from beyond the line of the Dniester and the Vistula have overthrown freedom as well as civil polity—freedom of speech, of trade, and of thought. This constitutes the moral necessity which exists on the part of free and civilised nations to resist the migratory dispositions of the Northern men.

How far the organised power of the Muscovite corresponds with the essential idea of a slavish barbarism, M. le Duc shall tell us in a few anecdotes. Here is an amusing illustration of the difficulties which beset even a despotic government when it has to deal with literature, and desires to be consistent: —

"It is impossible to conceive any thing more ridiculous than the aspect of the censorship of the press under Prince Menschikoff’s administration. It is true that the General Board in Russia has never been distinguished by ant great amount of perspicacity and luminous enlightenment, but it was reserved for Menschikoff to render it supereminently absurd. . . . .The words Liberty and Freedom, with all the adjectives and adverbs derived from them, are proscribed and expunged from the Russian vocabulary; and the following ludicrous anecdote will show the manner in which the censors act upon this proscription. Some time since, a professor of mathematics sent in the manuscript of a work on mechanics for the inspection of the Board, soliciting permission to publish it. Now, it happened that, in describing the action of some mechanical apparatus, the author stated that the wheels, springs, &c., worked freely; and further on he wrote that a straight line could be elongated into infinite space without the slightest limit; whereupon the censors struck out both words—the first without any comment, the second on the ground that the Russian Emperor’s authority was the only thing without limit in this world."

Here again is a good expression of the barbarism of the people. The story will probably recall a well-known passage in Tacitus. The vice referred to is the vice of barbarians: —

"How can it be expected that the Russian populace will abstain from intoxication when the practice is sanctified daily in their eyes by the example of the priests, their natural instructors? In one parish in the interior it is within the author’s knowledge that the inhabitants, for a long time past, have invariably kept their spiritual pastor under lock and key from Saturday evening until twelve o’clock on Sunday, to prevent his becoming too much intoxicated to be able to perform the mass; yet on some occasions they have been deceived, and he has staggered into the church, thanks to the bottle of brandy he had concealed beneath his frock."

Of a different kind, but equally good as an illustration of manners in the same factitiously-civilised empire, is the following story: —

"During the reign of the Emperor Alexander, the daughter of a noble family in a remote province fell in love with one of her father’s male domestics, and had the misfortune to become a mother. Fearing that her shame might be disclosed, she consented that the partner of her guilt should destroy the child; and, both her parents dying a few months afterwards, she was left an orphan. Then her former paramour began to persecute her unceasingly, and extorted large sums of money from her by threatening to reveal her crime. The girl yielded to his menaces for a considerable period, but, becoming weary of his pertinacity, she contrived to set fire to some premises where the man happened to be sleeping, and, all means of egress having been previously removed, he perished miserably in the flames. But, notwithstanding her freedom from any damning evidence, her bosom was now so torn by agonising remorse for the double crime she had committed, that one day, unable to bear her metal torments any longer, she hastened to the village church and confessed her sins to the priest, who, of course, communicated the astounding tale to his wife, under the promise of inviolable secrecy. Not long afterwards, the young lady was present at a ball given by a personage of the very highest distinction, where she eclipsed all her rivals by her beauty, and the splendour of her attire, when, whilst she was the ‘cynosure of others’ eyes,’ ‘the observed of all observers,’ the priest’s wife approached her unsuspecting victim, and openly recounted the horrifying story the young lady had confided to the priest. The ball-room was in an uproar, the lady was taken into custody immediately, and ultimately tried and condemned; but, being of noble birth, the judges thought it necessary to refer the sentence to the Emperor for his approbation previous to its being carried into execution. The result of the appeal was totally unlooked for; the Emperor was so indignant at the priest’s treachery, that he degraded him from his ministerial office, and sent him to the army to serve as a common soldier for life; and he was so touched with the girl’s sincere repentance, that he merely sentenced her to do penance in a convent for two months, which, with her shame and crimes, did not prevent her from making a most desirable marriage."

Ever true to the general ideas of the barbarian, Russia conquers, according to M. le Duc, by corruption rather than by force. The Macedonian, to quote an old story, said, he never despaired of taking a city into which he could drive two asses laden with gold. The Russians have a saying which means pretty much the same thing: —"We have ambassadors, therefore we need no fleets." M. le Duc says on this topic: —

"Russia values her troops at their absolute worth, and has but little confidence in them; therefore she has recourse to other and more effectual means of foreign subjugation, and thus it is that the soft voice of Muscovite persuasion ever mingles with the cannon’s roar, and the Czar’s victories cost less lead than gold. In the Turkish campaign of 1828, it is beyond a doubt that the Russians would have been compelled to an ignominious retreat if they had not bribed the Pacha of Varna to yield that fortress to them; they gained no ground in Hungary until they succeeded in purchasing the traitor Gorgey; and in Finland, where they encountered merely a handful of peasants, victory was only assured by seducing the Governor of Sveaborg. Wherever Russia has bared the blade, the chink of her treasures has been heard. The mines of Siberia are dearer to her in the hour of strife than the armouries of Systerback, Toula, and Briensk; and should war ensue, Russia will reckon upon corruption for success. It is not only the prevailing system, but one peculiarly agreeable to the old Muscovite party; for bribery is the only diplomacy known to barbarous hordes."

On the subject of the reasons which may have induced the Emperor Nicholas at this moment to break the peace of Europe, M. le Duc gives an explanation in the shape of one of those bits of court gossip which the elder Disraeli delighted to pick out of old papers and forgotten party libels, and dignify with the seducing title of "Secret History." We give the anecdote as we find it: —

"A circumstance which took place during the author’s late sojourn in Russia is likewise said to have greatly annoyed the Emperor. It is reported that when, in September, 1851, the anniversary of the twenty-fifth year of Nicholas’s reign was celebrated throughout the empire, he wished that the Senate would throw aside the usual forms of homage on grand state occasions, and, repairing to the foot of the throne, would hail him as ‘The Great!’ The Senate, however, did not coincide with the suggestion; they had the immeasurable audacity to refuse compliance with an insinuated request to flatter their ruler’s vanity, and Nicholas could not conceal his discontent. He omitted the act of amnesty which no Czar has failed to publish on all similar and other solemn state occasions, and which had even been announced. From that moment the Emperor’s disposition was altered visibly. Instead of being calm and majestic, and reasoning with logical accuracy of deduction, he became peevish, moody, inconsistent, and capricious, and then the bright star of the East set in clouded night, and the old Russian party were once more in the ascendant. The Emperor having failed to accomplish the darling object of his heart through the modern party in the Cabinet and the Council of the State, has thrown himself upon the old; and trusts that by flattering their prejudices in favour of the days gone by, by straining them to his breast, and giving way to all their schemes of rapine and of fraud, he will gain the wished-for title of ‘Nicholas the Great.’"

Our vivacious author does not fear for Europe. His knowledge of the state of the Russian empire makes him careless of the Czar’s headstrong passions. He finds the Muscovite look formidable only at a distance; go near, and the Imperial power assumes an unreal, stage-like, fugitive appearance. "The Emperor," says M. le Duc, "counts a million of soldiers on paper; but he has never been able to bring more than two hundred thousand at once into the field."

We give M. le Duc’s opinions, at this time of probable crisis, as we find them: —but, saving in so far as he illustrates general history, it is no part of our mission to discuss his views. —Athenaeum.

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