e has to deal is one upon which those
who are admitted to the intimacy of his councils can speak
with authority. It is one, however, upon which those who
have never heard him speak are often the most confident.

I can speak with some assurance on this matter, although it
is one on which it ought not to be necessary to speak at
all. But I have seen many men, crowned and uncrowned, in the
course of a tolerably long and varied journalistic career. I
have had four opportunities of talking with Nicholas II.
Altogether I have spent many hours alone with him. Our
conversation never flagged. It did not turn upon the
weather, but upon serious topics both at home and abroad, in
which I was intimately concerned and intensely interested.

Hence I have at least had ample materials for forming
judgment, and few people have had more of the experience of
contemporaries necessary to compare my impressions. I have
no hesitation in saying that I have seldom in the course of
thirty years met any man so quick in the uptake, so bright
in his mental perception, so sympathetic in his
understanding, or one possessing a wider range of
intellectual interest.

Neither have I ever met any one man or woman who impressed
me more with the crystalline sincerity of his soul. Of his
personal charm, of his quick sense of humor, of the genial
sense of good-fellowship by which he puts you at once at
your ease, I do not need to speak.

A Former Instructor's Impression.

Mr. Stead's view partly corroborates that of a fellow-journalist, Brayley
Hodgetts, who, in England, is considered an authority on Russian affairs,
having received his earlier education in that country and lived there many
years. Mr. Hodgetts wrote of the Czar in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, just
before the war with Japan, as follows:

A very great friend of mine was one of his instructors, and
when discussing in moments of confidence the character of
his imperial pupil I never once heard him speak of him
otherwise than in the language of sincere affection. He
always used in referring to him the Russian expression
_oomnitza_, meaning that he was wise and diligent.

It seems that he always showed great application, and also
an imperial aptitude for acquiring knowledge; but, above all
things, what struck my friend most was his high and noble
sense