ch at one time he had seemed
disposed to do. Soon they found themselves engaged in a secret conspiratory
movement having for its object the overthrow of Czarism. The story of the
failure of these romanticists, the manner in which the abortive attempt at
revolution in December, 1825, was suppressed, and how the leaders were
punished by Nicholas I--these things are well known to most students of
Russian history. The Decembrists, as they came to be called, failed, as
they were bound to do, but it would be a mistake to suppose that their
efforts were altogether vain. On the contrary, their inspiration was felt
throughout the next thirty years and was reflected in the literature of the
period. During that period Russian literature was tinged with the faith in
social regeneration held by most of the cultured intellectual classes. The
Decembrists were the spiritual progenitors of the Russian revolutionary
movement of our time. In the writings of Pushkin--himself a
Decembrist--Lermontoff, Gogol, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, and many others less
well known, the influence of the Decembrist movement is clearly manifested.

If we are to select a single figure as the founder of the modern social
revolutionary movement in Russia, that title can be applied to Alexander
Herzen with greater fitness than to any other. His influence upon the
movement during many years was enormous. Herzen was half-German, his mother
being German. He was born at Moscow in 1812, shortly before the French
occupation of the city. His parents were very rich and he enjoyed the
advantages of a splendid education, as well as great luxury. At twenty-two
years of age he was banished to a small town in the Urals, where he spent
six years, returning to Moscow in 1840. It is noteworthy that the offense
for which he had been sent into exile was the singing of songs in praise of
the Decembrist martyrs. This occurred at a meeting of one of the "Students'
Circles" founded by Herzen for the dissemination of revolutionary Socialist
ideals among the students.

Upon his return to Moscow in 1840 Herzen, together with Bakunin and other
friends, again engaged in revolutionary propaganda and in 1842 he was again
exiled. In 1847, through the influence of powerful friends, he received
permission to leave Russia for travel abroad. He never again saw his native
land, all the remaining years of life being spent in exile. After a tour of
Italy, Herzen arrived in Paris on the eve of the Revol