s skillful laborers as she possesses, but their
industry is of a far less various character. Russia is a new country,
and she requires what England has to dispose of; and England finds her
account in purchasing the raw materials that are so abundantly produced
in Russia. Commercially speaking, therefore, these two nations could not
fall out, could not quarrel, could not fight, if they would. In all
other respects, too, they could be counted upon to set a good example to
all other communities. They had more than once been allies, each had
done the other good services at critical tunes, and they had had the
foremost places in that grand alliance which had twice dethroned
Napoleon I. The exceptions to their general good understanding belong to
those exceptions which are supposed to be useful in proving a given
rule. When the tory rulers of England became alarmed because of the
success of Catharine II. in her second Turkish war, and proposed doing
what was done more than sixty years later,--to assist the Osmanlis,--the
opposition to their policy became so powerful that even the strong
ministry of William Pitt had to listen to its voice; which shows that
the tendency of English opinion was then favorable to Russia. The
hostility of Czar Paul to England, in his last days, is attributed to
the failure of his mind; and the immediate resumption of good relations
between the two countries after his death, establishes the fact that the
English and the Russians were not sharers in the Czar's feelings. During
the five years that followed Tilsit, Russia appeared to be the enemy of
England, and war existed for some time between the two empires; but this
was owing to the ascendency of the French, Alexander having to choose
between England and France. The nominal enemies did each other as little
injury as possible; and, in 1812, they became greater friends than ever.
Most Englishmen were probably of Lord Holland's opinion, that England's
interest dictated a Russian connection; and in the eighteenth century
England was, in some sense, the nursing mother of the new empire, though
once or twice she was inclined to do as other nurses have
done,--administer some punishment to the rude and healthy child she was
fostering, and not without reason. So harmonious had been the relations
of these two magnificent states, that an eminent Russian author, Dr.
Hamel, writing in 1846, could say: 'Nearly three hundred years have now
elapsed since England gr