ured fortress
behind him, sweeping the Russians back from Mukden; Kuropatkin sending
despairing messages to the Tsar, who, bewildered and trembling before
his own subjects at home, was still vibrating between the two widely
opposing influences--the spirit of the old despotism, and that of a new
age which clamored to be admitted.

Rescript followed quickly upon rescript; one sounding as if written by
de Witte, the other as if dictated by Pobiedonostseff; while alarming
rumors were coming hourly from Moscow, Finland, Poland, the Crimea, the
Caucasus; and the great fabric before which the world had trembled
seemed threatened at every vital point.

In the midst of these colossal disasters stood a young man not
fashioned for great events--from whom the world and the situation
demand a statesmanship as able as Bismarck's, a political ideal as
exalted as Washington's, a prompt and judicious dealing with an
unprecedented crisis worthy of Peter the Great. And not finding this
ample endowment, we call him a weakling. It is difficult for the
Anglo-Saxon, fed and nourished for a thousand years upon the principles
of political freedom and their application, to realize the strain to
which a youth of average ability is subjected when he is called upon to
cast aside all the things he has been taught to reverence,--to abandon
the ideals he holds most sacred,--to violate all the traditions of his
ancestors,--to act in direct opposition to the counsel of his natural
advisers; and to do all these things at the dictation of men he has
been taught not only to distrust, but to hold in contempt.

Chief among his counsellors is the Procurator Pobiedonostseff, head of
the "Holy Synod,"--that evil genius of two reigns, who reminds him of
the sacredness of his trust, and his duty to leave his divine heritage
to his son unimpaired by impious reforms. Next to him stands
Muravieff, the wise and powerful Minister of Justice, creator of modern
Siberia, and member of the Court of Arbitration at The Hague, who
speaks with authority when he tells him he has not the _right_ to
change a political system created by his predecessors; and still nearer
than these are the Grand Dukes, a phalanx of uncles and imperial
relatives surrounding him with a petrified wall of ancient prejudices.
Confronting these imposing representatives of imperial and historic
Russia are a few more or less discredited men, like M. de Witte and
Prince Mirski, counselling and warni