come, staking an English judge, for instance, with his rifle, against some wretched conscript whom Napoleon had been drilling thoroughly, with his, seemed and seems to me wretched policy. But

if it were to be done this way- of course the best thing possible was to work as widely as you could in getting your recruits; and, if England were too conservative to say, "We are twentyeight millions, one-fifth fighting men,"too conservative to put rifles or muskets into the hands of those five or six million fighters, the next best thing was to rank as many as you could in your handful of upper-class riflemen. However, I offered my advice liberally to all comers, and explained that at home I was a soldier when the Government wanted

me,

was registered somewhere, and could be marched to San Juan, about which General Harney was vaporing just then, whenever the authorities chose. So it was that I and Chiron stood superior to see Sergeant Reed drill thirty-nine working-men. Mr. Hughes was on the terrace, teaching an awkward squad their facings.

Sergeant Reed paraded his men, and wanted one or two more. He came and asked Mr. Hughes for them, — and he in turn told us very civilly, that, if "we knew our facings," we might fall in. Alas for the theory of the Landsturm! Alas for the fame of the Massachusetts militia! Here are two of the

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one hundred and fifty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty non-commissioned officers, musicians, artificers, and privates" whom Massachusetts that year registered at Washington, two soldiers for whom somebody, somewhere, has two cartridge-boxes, two muskets, two shoulder-straps, and the rest; - here is an opportunity for them to show the gentlemen of a foreign service how much better we know our facings than they theirs, — and, alas, the representative two do not know their facings at all! We declined the invitation as courteously as it was offered. Perhaps we thus escaped a prosecution under the Act of 1819, when we came home, for having

entered the service of a foreign power. Certainly we avoided the guilt of felony, in England; for it is felony for an alien to take any station of trust or honor under the Queen, and when Mr. Bates and Louis Napoleon were sworn in as special constables on the Chartists' day, they might both have been tried for felony on the information of Fergus O'Connor, and sent to some Old Bailey or other. None the less did we regret our ignorance of the facings, and, after a few minutes, sadly leave the field of glory.

My last visit to the Working-Men's College was to attend one of Mr. Maurice's Sunday-evening classes, and this was the only occasion when I ever appeared as a student. It was held at nine in the evening, out of the way, therefore, of any Church-service. There gathered nearly twenty young men, who seemed in most instances to be personally strangers to each other. Mr. Maurice is so far an historical person that I have a right, I believe, to describe his appearance. He must be about fifty years old now. He looks as if he had done more than fifty years' worth of work, - and yet does not look older than that, on the whole. His hair is growing white; his face shows traces of experience of more sorts than one, but is very gentle and winning in its expression, both in his welcome, and in the vivid conversation which is called his lecture. He sat at a large table, and we gathered around it with our Testaments and note-books. The subject was the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the conversation turning mostly, of course, on the "rest" which the people of God enter into. This is not the place for a report of the exposition, at once completely devout and completely transcendental, by which this distinguished theologian lighted up this passage for that cluster of young men. But I may say something of the manner of one so well known and so widely honored among a "present posterity" in America, for his works. He read the chapter through,— with a

running commentary at first, — blocking out, as it were, his ground notion of it. This was the first ebauche of his criticism; but you felt after its details without quite finding them. In a word, the impression was precisely the uneasy impression you feel after the first reading of one of his sermons or lectures,- that there is a very grand general conception, but that you do not see how it is going to "fay in" in its respective parts. One of the students intimated some such doubt regarding some of the opening verses, and there at once appeared enough to show how frank was the relation, in that class at least, between the teacher and the pupils. Then began the real work and the real joy of the evening. Then on the background he had washed in before he began to put in his middle-distance, and at last his foreground, and, last of all, to light up the whole by a set of flashes, which he had reserved, unconsciously, to the close. He dropped his forehead on his hand, worked it nervously with his fingers, as if he were resolved that what was within should serve him, went over the whole chapter in much more detail a second time, held us all charged with his electricity, so that we threw in this, that, or another question or difficulty,- till he fell back yet a third time, and again went through it,

weaving the whole together, and making part illustrate part under the light of the comment and illumination which it had received before, and so, when we read it with him for the fourth and last time, it was no longer a string of beads, -a set of separate verses, Jewish, antiquated, and fragmentary, but one vivid illustration of the "peace which passeth all understanding" into which the Christian man may enter.

With this fortunate illustration and exposition of the worth and work of the Working-Men's College my connection with it closed. It seems to me a beautiful monument of the love and energy of its founder. Perhaps we are all best known through our friends, or, as the proverb says, "by the company we keep." Let the reader know Mr. Maurice, then, by remembering that he is the godfather of Tennyson's son,

Two great nations are peculiarly entitled to be considered modern in their general character, though each is living under ancient institutions. They are the United States and Russia. Neither of these nations is a century old, regarded as a power that largely affects affairs by its action, and into the composition of each there enters a great variety of elements. The United States may be said to date from 1761, just one hundred years

ago, when the American debate began on the question of granting Writs of Assistance to the revenue-officers of the crown. The struggle between England and America was then commenced in the chief court of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and the Declaration of Independence was but the logical conclusion of the argument of James Otis; but that conclusion would not have established anything, had it not been confirmed by the inexorable logic

of cannon. The last resort of kings was then on the side of the people, and gave them the victory. The fifteen years that passed between the time when James Otis spoke in Boston and the time when John Adams spoke in Philadelphia belong properly to our national history, and should be so regarded. The grandson and biographer of John Adams says that Mr. Adams "was attending the court as a member of the bar, and heard, with enthusiastic admiration, the argument of Otis, the effect of which was to place him at the head of that race of orators, statesmen, and patriots, by whose exertions the Revolution of American Independence was achieved. This cause was unquestionably the incipient struggle for that independence. It was to Mr. Adams like the oath of Hamilcar administered to Hannibal. It is doubtful whether Otis himself, or any person of his auditory, perceived or imagined the consequences which were to flow from the principles developed in that argument. though, in substance, it was nothing more than the question upon the legality of general warrants,―a question by which, when afterward raised in England, in Wilkes's case, Lord Camden himself was taken by surprise, and gave at first an incorrect decision,—yet, in the hands of James Otis, this question involved the whole system of the relations of authority and subjection between the British government and their colonies in America. It involved the principles of the British Constitution, and the whole theory of the social compact and the natural rights of mankind.”

For al

In the summer of 1762, about seventeen months after Otis had made his argument, the existence of modern Russia began. Catharine II. then commenced her wonderful reign, having dethroned and murdered her husband, Peter III., the last of the sovereigns of Russia who could make any pretensions to possession of the blood of the Romanoffs.

A minor German princess, who originally had no more prospect of becoming Empress-Regnant of Russia than

she had of becoming Queen-Regnant of France, Sophia-Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst was elevated to the throne of the Czars on the 9th of July, 1762; and a week later her miserable husband learned how true was the Italian dogma, that the distance between the prisons of princes and their graves is but short. Catharine II. founded a new dynasty in Russia, and gave to that country the peculiar character which it has ever since borne, and which has enabled it on more than one occasion to decide the fate of Europe, and therefore of the world. Important as were the labors of Peter the Great, it does not appear to admit of a doubt that their force was wellnigh spent when Peter III. ascended the throne; and his conduct indicated the triumph of the old Russian party and policy, as the necessary consequence of his violent feeling in behalf of German influences, ideas, and practices. The Czarina, like those Romans who became more German than the Germans themselves, affected to be fanatically Russian in her sentiments and purposes, and so acquired the power to Europeanize the policy of her empire. She it was who definitely placed the face of Russia to the West, and prepared the way for the entrance of Russian armies into Italy and France, and for the partition of Poland, the ultimate effect of which promises to be the reunion of that country under the sceptre of the Czar. It was the seizure of so much of Poland by Russia that fixed the latter's international character; and it was Catharine II. who destroyed Poland, and added so much of its territory to the dominions of the Czars. After the first partition had been effected, it was no longer in Russia's power to refrain from taking a leading part in European politics; and when her grandson, in 1814, was on the point of making war on England, France, and Austria, rather than abandon the new Polish spoil which he had torn from Napoleon I., he was but carrying out the great policy of the Great Catharine. If we look into the political literature of the last century, we shall find that Peter I.'s

action had very little effect in the way of increasing the influence of Russia abroad. His eccentric conduct caused him to be looked upon as a sort of royal wild man of the woods, rather than as a great reformer whose aim it was to elevate his country to an equality with kingdoms that had become old while Russia was ruled by barbarians of the remote East. He was "a self-made man" on a throne, and displayed all the oddities and want of breeding that usually mark the demeanor of persons whose youth has not had the advantages that proceed from good examples and regular instruction. Of the courtly graces, and of those accomplishments which are most valued in courts, he had as many as belong to an ill-conditioned baboon. A railway-car on a cattle-train does not require more cleaning, at the end of a long journey, than did a room in a palace after it had been occupied by Peter and his clever spouse. Some of his best-authenticated acts could not be paralleled outside of a piggery. The Prussian court, one hundred and sixty years since, was not a very nice place, and its members were by no means remarkable for refinement; but they were shocked by the proceedings of the Czar and the Czarina, some of which greatly resembled those which are not uncommon in a very wild "wilderness of monkeys." The last of Peter's descendants who reigned and ruled was his daughter Elizabeth, who died in 1761, and who was a most admirable representative of her admirable parents. Neither the manners nor the morals of the Russian court and the Russian empire had improved during the twenty years that she governed; and as to policy in government, she had none, and apparently she was incapable of comprehending a political principle. Had her reign been followed by that of some Russian prince of kindred character as well as of kindred blood, and had that reign extended to twenty years' time, Russia would have fallen back to the position she had held in 1680, and never could have become a European power. For

tunately or unfortunately, - who shall as yet undertake to decide which, considering as well European interests as Russian interests?- the reign of Peter III. was too short to be worth historical counting, and Elizabeth's real successor was a foreigner, who not only was capable of comprehending Peter the Great's ideas and purpose, but who had the advantage of understanding that world the civilization and vices of which Peter had sought to engraft on the Russian stock. The grand barbarian himself never could understand more than one-half of the work to which he devoted his life, as there was nothing in his nature to which Occidental thought could firmly fasten itself. He knew little of that the effects of which he so much admired. His mind was essentially Oriental in its cast, and the creation of his Northern capital was a piece of work that might have been done by some Eastern despot; and in the preceding century something like it had been done by Shah Jehan, when he created the new city of Delhi. In no European country could such an undertaking have been attempted. It pleased Catharine II., in after-days, to say of Peter, that "he introduced European manners and European costumes amongst a European · people"; but this was only a piece of flattery to her subjects, whom she did so much to Europeanize by making them believe that they were of Europe, and were destined to rule that continent. She it was who did what Peter planned, and by making use of Russians as her agents. Her statesmen, her generals, and her "favorites" were Russians; and it was after her character and purposes became known that the rulers of Western Europe were forced to the conclusion that a change of policy was inevitable. But for the occurrence of the French Revolution, that Anglo-French Alliance which has been regarded as one of the prodigies of our prodigy-creating age would have been anticipated by more than sixty years. By destroying Poland and humiliating Turkey, Catharine forever settled the character of the Russian Empire; and her

successors were enabled to solidify her work in consequence of the course which events took after the overthrow of the old French monarchy. Russian support was highly bidden for by both those parties in Europe which were headed respective ly by France and by England; and it is difficult to decide from which Russia most profited in those days, the friendship of England or the enmity of France. One thing was sufficiently clear, and that was, that, when the war had been decided in favor of the reactionists, Russia was the greatest power in the world. In the autumn of 1815, a Russian army one hundred and sixty thousand strong was reviewed near Paris, a spectacle that must have caused the sovereigns and statesmen of the West to have some doubts as to the wisdom of their course in paying so very high a price for the overthrow of Napoleon. It was certain that the genie had broken from his confinement, and that, while he towered to the skies, his shadow lay upon the world. The hegemony which Russia held for almost forty years after that date justified the fears which then were expressed by reflecting men. It only remained to be seen whether the Russian sovereigns, proceeding in the spirit that had moved Peter and Catharine, would take those measures by which alone a Russian People could be formed; and to that end, the abolition of serfdom was absolutely necessary: the masses of their subjects, the very population from which their victorious armies were conscribed, being in a certain sense slaves, a state of things that had no parallel in the condition of any European country.*

*At what precise time Russia's policy began to influence the action of the European powers it would not be easy to say. Unquestionably, Peter I.'s conduct was not without its effect, and his triumph over Charles XII. makes itself felt even to this day, and it ever will be felt. "Pultowa's day" was one of the grand field-days of history. Sweden had obtained a high place in Europe, in consequence of the grand part she played in the Thirty Years' War, to which contest she contributed the greatest generals, the ablest statesmen, and the best soldiers; and the successes

Thus the United States and Russia began their careers at the same time, as nations destined to have influence in the

ordering of Western life. They were then, as they are now, very unlike to each other. In one respect only was there any resemblance between them: In this country there were some myriads of slaves, and in Russia there were many millions of serfs. Now who, of all the

of Charles XII. in the first half of his reign promised to increase the power of that country, which had become great under the rule and direction of Gustavus Adolphus and Oxenstierna. This fair promise was lost with the Battle of Pultowa; and a country that might have successfully resisted Russia, and which, had its greatness continued, could have protected Poland, — if, indeed, Poland could have been threatened, had Russia been unsuccessful at Pultowa, was thrown into the list of third-rate nations. Poland was virtually given up to Russia through the defeat of Charles XII., just as, a century later, she failed of revival through the defeat of Napoleon I. in his Russian expedition. But the effect of Sweden's defeat was not fully seen until many years after its occurrence. Prussia became alarmed at the progress of Russia at an early day. The War of the Polish Succession was decided by Russian intervention, in 1733. In 1741 Maria Theresa relied on Rus

sia, and in 1746 Russia and the Empress of Germany formed a defensive alliance. The Cotillon Coalition of the Seven Years' War, formed for the destruction of Frederic II., and the parties to which were the Czarina Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, and Madame de Pompadour, a drunkard, a prude, and a harlot, brought Russia famously forward in Europe. In the Eighty-Seventh Letter of Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, published a century ago, are some very just and discriminating remarks on "the folly of the Western parts of Europe in employing the Russians to fight their battles," which show that their author was far in advance of his time, and that he foresaw the growth of Russia in importance before she had seized upon Poland. In Catharine II.'s time, the Russian Empire was the object of much adulation from Western envoys, and the English sought to obtain the assistance of the barbarians in the American War, but with not such success as they desired, though they managed to keep our envoy from the court, and to make Russia unfriendly to us. Our diplomatic relations with Russia did not begin until a generation after the Declaration of Independence.