r selling serfs apart from the soil, he utterly refused;
and when they overtasked their human chattels, Paul made a law that no
serf should be required to give more than three days in the week to the
tillage of his master's domain.

But, within five years after his accession, Paul had developed into such
a ravenous wild-beast that it became necessary to murder him. This duty
done, there came a change in the spirit of Russian sovereignty as from
March to May; but, sadly for humanity, there came, at the same time, a
change in the spirit of European politics as from May to March.

For, although the new Tzar, Alexander I., was mild and liberal, the
storm of French ideas and armies had generally destroyed in monarchs'
minds any poor germs of philanthropy which had ever found lodgment
there. Still Alexander breasted this storm,--found time to plan for
his serfs, and in 1803 put his hand to the work of helping them toward
freedom. His first edict was for the creation of the class of "free
laborers." By this, masters and serfs were encouraged to enter into
an arrangement which was to put the serf into immediate possession
of himself, of a homestead, and of a few acres,--giving him time to
indemnify his master by a series of payments. Alexander threw his heart
into this scheme; in his kindliness he supposed that the pretended
willingness of the nobles meant something; but the serf-owning caste,
without openly opposing, twisted up bad consequences with good, braided
impossibilities into possibilities: the whole plan became a tangle, and
was thrown aside.

The Tzar now sought to foster other good efforts, especially those made
by some earnest nobles to free their serfs by will. But this plan, also,
the serf-owning caste entangled and thwarted.

At last, the storm of war set in with such fury that all internal
reforms must be lost sight of. Russia had to make ready for those
campaigns in which Napoleon gained every battle. Then came that peaceful
meeting on the raft at Tilsit,--worse for Russia than any warlike
meeting; for thereby Napoleon seduced Alexander, for years, from plans
of bettering his Empire into dreams of extending it.

Coming out of these dreams, Alexander had to deal with such realities
as the burning of Moscow, the Battle of Leipsic, and the occupation of
France; yet, in the midst of those fearful times,--when the grapple of
the Emperors was at the fiercest,--in the very year of the burning of
Moscow,--Alexand