to Siberia; thence he escaped to Japan and came
to England, finally settling in Switzerland. His writings and speeches
did much to rouse the Slavs of Austria, Poland, and Russia to a sense of
their national importance, and of the duty of overthrowing the
Governments that cramped their energies.

As in the case of Prudhon his zeal for the non-existent and hatred of
the actual bordered on madness, as when he included most of the results
of art, literature, and science in his comprehensive anathemas.
Nevertheless his crusade for destruction appealed to no small part of
the sensitive peoples of the Slavonic race, who, differing in many
details, yet all have a dislike of repression and a longing to have
their "fling[224]." A union in a Panslavonic League for the overthrow of
the Houses of Romanoff, Hapsburg, and Hohenzollern promised to satisfy
the vague longings of that much-baffled race, whose name, denoting
"glorious," had become the synonym for servitude of the lowest type.
Such was the creed that disturbed Eastern and Central Europe throughout
the period 1847-78, now and again developing a kind of iconoclastic
frenzy among its votaries.

[Footnote 224: For this peculiarity and a consequent tendency to
extremes, see Prof. G. Brandes _Impressions of Russia_, p. 22.]

This revolutionary creed absorbed another of a different kind. The
second creed was scientific and self-centred; it had its origin in the
Liberal movement of the sixties, when reforms set in, even in
governmental circles. The Czar, Alexander II., in 1861 freed the serfs
from the control of their lords, and allotted to them part of the plots
which they had hitherto worked on a servile tenure. For various reasons,
which we cannot here detail, the peasants were far from satisfied with
this change, weighted, as it was, by somewhat onerous terms, irksome
restrictions, and warped sometimes by dishonest or hostile officials.
Limited powers of local government were also granted in 1864 to the
local Zemstvos or land-organisations; but these again failed to satisfy
the new cravings for a real system of self-government; and the Czar,
seeing that his work produced more ferment than gratitude, began at the
close of the sixties to fall back into the old absolutist ways[225].

[Footnote 225: See Wallace's _Russia_, 2 vols.; _Russia under the
Tzars_, by "Stepniak," vol. ii. chap. xxix.; also two lectures on
Russian affairs by Prof. Vinogradoff, in _Lectures on the Histor