ual initiative and civic freedom; the Land
Powers founded their empires on organisation and order. The dominion of
the former was sporadic and easily dissolvable; that of the latter was
solid, and liable to be destroyed only by some mighty cataclysm. The
contrast between them is as old and ineffaceable as that which subsists
between the restless sea and the unchanging plain.

While the comparison between England and Athens is incomplete, and at
some points fallacious, that between the Czars and the Caesars is in many
ways curiously close and suggestive. As soon as the Roman eagles soared
beyond the mighty ring of the Alps and perched securely on the slopes of
Gaul and Rhaetia, the great Republic had the military advantage of
holding the central position as against the mutually hostile tribes of
Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. Thanks to that advantage, to her
organisation, and to her military colonies, she pushed forward an
ever-widening girdle of empire, finally conferring the blessings of the
_pax Romana_ on districts as far remote as the Tyne, the Lower Rhine and
Danube, the Caucasus, and the Pillars of Hercules.

Russia also has used to the full the advantages conferred by a central
position, an inflexible policy, and a military-agrarian system well
adapted to the needs of the nomadic peoples on her borders. In the
fifteenth century, her polity emerged victorious from the long struggle
with the Golden Horde of Tartars [I keep the usual spelling, though
"Tatars" is the correct form]; and, as the barbarous Mongolians lost
their hold on the districts of the middle Volga, the power of the Czars
began its forward march, pressing back Asiatics on the East and Poles on
the West. In 1556, Ivan the Terrible seized Astrakan at the mouth of the
Volga, and victoriously held Russia's natural frontiers on the East, the
Ural Mountains, and the northern shore of the Caspian Sea. We shall deal
in a later chapter with her conquest of Siberia, and need only note here
that Muscovite pioneers reached the shores of the Northern Pacific as
early as the year 1636.

Russia's conquests at the expense of Turks, Circassians, and Persians is
a subject alien to this narrative; and the tragic story of the overthrow
of Poland at the hand of the three partitioning Powers, Russia, Prussia,
and Austria, does not concern us here.

It is, however, needful to observe the means by which she was able to
survive the dire perils of her early youth a