Or droned in the desecrate temple of Day. Ah! better to pass to the sullen dumb hol

And worshippers failed at the bountiful Than to learn that the air which my destiny

From Macmillan's Magazine.

OUR FIRST AMBASSADORS TO RUSSIA.

Venice in unholy compact with the Turk; and northward across the Baltic THE story of our earliest relations and its sister seas stretched the mighty with Russia is one so fraught with in- Hansa, powerful enough even in its terest for us now that it is a wonder it decay to scare away rivals. Still it was should be so little known. It is a story clear some new outlet must be found, full of adventure and romance, and for English goods were in little request were it not for the untimely shadow among our neighbors. So on a day that fell upon it from the more dazzling certain grave merchants of London met achievements of Drake and his compan- to find a remedy. Sebastian Cabot, ions, it would have a high place among who happened to be in town, was inthe treasured tales of our boyhood. For vited to attend, that they might lay Muscovy was our first great discovery. their difficulty before him. They had Till we, by a strange and unheard-of observed, so they said, how the wealth way, found out where she lay hidden of the Spaniards and Portingales was behind the barriers with which 'her marvellously increased by the discovery anxious neighbors were cramping her and search of new trades, and they had alarming growth, and taught her how determined to try their luck. Did he, to turn them, she was isolated from Europe. That we should ever grow to be rivals was a forecast beyond the most fantastic dreams of visionaries; and so by a startling irony of fate it was England who first welcomed Russia to the West.

the renowned cosmographer, happen to know of any new trades or countries which were not yet searched or discovered?

Did he know ? Had he not been dreaming, thinking, persuading of nothing else through fifty years of national It is the story too (in the way of a deafness and lethargy? Without hope sub-plot) of the first conquest of British now of outshining Columbus he had trade, and worth the telling were it only reached the age of seventy-five to see for the minor characters, forgotten his great discovery in the hands of Elizabethans, who pass the stage with Spaniards, and here at the eleventh the incomparable strut of that time, hour was his opportunity. From day and display themselves very gallantly, to day, with the fire of youth renewed, trading and fighting pirates in English the great geographer poured into the vessels upon the Caspian Sea, driving their way into the wilds of Asia by the very routes which have been completely opened only in our own days, and bearding on his throne the most atrocious tyrant in history.

cars of those hard-headed citizens the secret of the passage to Cathay by the north-east; and at last, with the notes and maps that were the fruit of his life of labor and disappointment, he produced conviction. A syndicate was It was when Edward the Sixth was formed, and three ships were bought king that it began, as England awoke at and equipped. The command was last to the Renascence. Until then, in given to the famous Sir Hugh Wilspite of all the efforts of the Cabots, loughby, proto-martyr of Arctic exploEnglish commerce had never really ration, a man whose knightly figure and roused herself to the new era that Columbus had made; and when at last she opened her eyes and, shaking off the fetters of the Hanseatic League, sat up to look about her, it was to find herself too late. Every avenue was closed. Westwards the Indies were in the hands of Spain; eastwards they were grasped by Portugal; the Mediterranean was almost impassable for Barbary pirates; beyond was the Levant fast held by

tragic death have overshadowed the fame of his more capable and no less heroic lieutenant, who was the real leader of the quest. This was Richard Chancellor, a follower of Sir Henry Sidney who all along had warmly fostered the project and obtained for it the countenance of his playfellow the king. So high was the reputation Chancellor had already won for himself as a traveller in Africa and the Levant, that it

soon they learnt the truth. It was not Cathay, the people said, and their king was not the great Cham; they had never heard of Quinsay and Cambala ; but it was a discovery brilliant enough to cover all Chancellor's cares. For the country was called Muscovy and the king's name was Ivan, and Chancellor had found a secret way to the mysterious lands which the Hansa had guarded with such successful jealousy.

was considered no small assurance of it was to the golden towns, and too success when Sidney was willing to part, as he said, with the services of so tried a friend and excellent a servant. It was on the 24th of May, 1553, that the three ships dropped down the Thames amid a scene of great enthusiasm. Each was provisioned for eighteen months and bore a letter from the king in Greek, Latin, and divers other tongues, with a fine address "To all Kings, Princes, Rulers, Judges, and Governors of the earth, and all other Without hesitation he determined to having excellent dignity on the same in winter where he was and explore the all places under the universal Heaven." interior. After vainly trying to get the With this vague direction they sailed consent of the wondering officials he away for Wardhouse, the present grew impatient, and without waiting for Vadoe, on the extreme north of Nor-authority boldly set out on a sledge to way, where was a fort and trading-sta- find the capital. Before him had sped tion frequented by northern merchants. a messenger announcing the arrival of There, some two months later, Chan- a strange nation of singular gentleness cellor put in, but it was alone. In a and courtesy, and ere long he met with gale he had parted company with his a bearer of letters from the czar which consorts and he was never to see them turned his adventurous journey into a again. Deprived of his guidance, their triumph. At Moscow he was received lot was to wander about those desert with all the pomp and splendor of seas till every man of them was a frozen corpse. It was in vain Chancellor waited for them to rejoin, and in spite of his forlorn condition, and all the terrors which certain Scots he met there painted of the dangers before him, he resolved to proceed alone, "Determining either to bring that to pass which was intended, or else to die the death."

which that barbaric court with its Byzantine veneer was capable. Though Ivan had been on the throne for twenty years he was still a young man, and under his Queen Anastasia's gentle influence had not yet fallen into those bloodthirsty frenzies which were soon to earn him the surname of "Terrible.” His kingdom already stretched from the frontiers of Livonia and Lithuania to Siberia, and he was even then engaged in the conquests of Kazan and Astrakhan which were to extend his borders to the Caspian. A wise and sagacious monarch still, he was doing his best to bring the influence of the West to tame his savage empire. But Poland and the Hansa, in a vision of what the young giant on their borders was to be, denied him all assistance in art or craft or material, and rigorously barred him from the Western powers,

So he kept on his course to the unknown parts of the world, and sailed so far," Over a huge and mighty sea wherein was no night at all, but a continual light and brightness of the sun shining clearly thereon that he came at last to a certain great bay." It was the White Sea he had found, and as he lay his head southward and saw it still stretching before him he knew it for that place where, as the dreaming science of those days taught, the sea trended down to Cathay and the mighty It is easy then to picture his exultacities of which Marco Polo had told. tion at the appearance of the English At the bottom of the bay they found the on his coasts. All through the winter. river they had learned to expect, and Chancellor was royally entertained at landing there, with the strange skill Moscow, and in the spring, so soon as those old mariners had, they eagerly the navigation was open, he was sent questioned the natives to know how far on his way with a promise of large

privileges for his employers and an invitation from Ivan to Edward for an ambassador to come out and negotiate a treaty of commerce.

To this end their agents were busy establishing a factory at Vologda, the great mart of the Dwina, and working for a concession from the government.

The sensation which Chancellor's Killingworth, their chief agent, sucglowing account of his achievement ceeded, by his fine manners and the aroused was profound. At the earliest splendors of his five-foot golden beard, moment he was sent out again with in producing so good an impression on agents both for the crown and for the Ivan that he not only granted the privmerchants in his company. At home ileges required, but resolved to send high and low vied with one another in under the care of Chancellor a high applauding a discovery which bid fair officer of Vologda, one Ossip Nepeja, to eclipse the fame of Vasco da Gama. as ambassador to the English court. A company was founded under the Not for the first or last time, however, rosiest colors. All the great officers of the heavens frowned on the alliance. State took shares, and procured from The autumn proved unusually stormy; Philip and Mary a charter incorporating the ship in which Chancellor and Nethem and their less exalted partners by peja sailed, after battling with adverse the sounding title of "Governor, Con- gales for months, was dashed to pieces suls, Assistants, fellowship and com- in Pitsligo Bay; and the heroic Chanmonalty of the Merchant Adventurers cellor, who held that "a man of valor by Seas and Navigations for the dis- could not commit a more dishonorable covery of lands, territories, isles, do- part than for fear of danger to avoid minions, and seignories." Such was the birth of the famous Muscovy Company, or, as it was then commonly called, the Company of the New Trades, which was destined to make an era in the history of commerce by finally breaking up the monopoly of the Hansa, and to be for many a long year to come the focus of Anglo-Russian diplomacy.

The enthusiasm was reasonable enough. Far and wide it was believed that the problem of a short route to Cathay, to which the discovery of America was due, had received a new solution. By this time men were used to wonders. It was held to be only a matter of a few years for a practicable route to be opened, and thoughtful men in Venice, which was then the centre of the overland trade from the East, began to anticipate with anxiety "a wonderful change and revolution in this our part of the world." It was long therefore before the company entirely lost sight of the original purpose of their incorporation; but after the first excitement had cooled the practical men of business were in the main more bent on fostering the promising bird in their hands than hunting for those that might be left in the bush.

and shun great attempts," was lost in trying to get the ambassador ashore. Nepeja, who might have been better spared, was saved, together with some half of his suite; but it was only to fall into the hands of the Aberdeenshire wreckers. Shipwrecked crews in those days could look for little mercy; and, after suffering unspeakable indignities and being robbed of everything he possessed, he was only rescued at last at the urgent representations of the company to the Scottish court.

Such was the ominous greeting that befell the first Russian envoy on our coasts. Everything of course was done to restore the stolen goods and supplant the disagreeable impression. The Scottish government comforted him with a splendid reception. Two hundred gentlemen rode with him to the Border, and thence he was conducted to London in state by the company's emissaries, where he was received with all the splendor of which royal and civic hospitality was capable. He became the lion of the season. For months he was fêted and feasted, and all to such good purpose that early in the year 1557 a treaty of commerce was signed. So, with unprecedented courtesies eclipsing everything he had seen in Scotland,

the ambassador was dismissed, charged of a power which could supply him with letters very tenderly drawn from the king and queen to the czar, and with royal gifts to delight him, including (strangest of love-tokens !) a pair of lions.

as

It

with war material. The company had seized the occasion in the usual way. They had already begun what we should now call a trade-gun business, and among other merchandise that JenAn expedition on a greater scale than | kinson brought out was a consignment had yet been attempted was ready to of a hundred shirts of mail," such old carry him back, and the choice of its things, new scoured," it was afterwards commander, now Chancellor was gone, explained, no man in England was a matter of the gravest concern. would wear." But the czar made no Not only was it perhaps the richest of complaints, and not only granted Jenits kind that had ever left our shores, kinson the passports he desired, but but dangers were looming in the East. also commissioned him as imperial The company was finding itself a factor agent for sundry affairs of his own. in European politics. Rumor said that was of course impossible that the projPoland and the Hansa were taking ect could succeed. After a journey alarm at the new trade, and an attempt filled with the most diverting hazards on the ships was known to be contem- by land and sea he succeeded in peneplated. The ambassador, too, had not trating to Bokhara, but it was only to proved the guileless barbarian the mer- convince himself that the country was chants took him for. "We do not find much too unsettled for trade. "It is a him," they wrote out to their agent, marvel," says he, "if a king reign "now at the last so conformable to there above three or four years." Yet reason as we thought we should." he did not return empty. Besides comAnd above all was wanted a man to mercial information of the highest mowhom could be entrusted the great ment, he brought back in his train a project that the company had now number of ransomed Russian subjects formed for endeavoring to penetrate to and envoys from Bokhara, Balkh, and Cathay overland. Fortunately there other khanates. The czar was dehappened to be in London a man in lighted. Jenkinson was taken into every way equal to the difficult task. high favor, and in recognition of his This man was Anthony Jenkinson, one services he was able to obtain still of the least known and most successful larger privileges for the English comof English pioneers, a man blessed pany. Among them was the right to with an iron constitution and a courage and tenacity of purpose that were indomitable, and yet so tempered by tact and sweetened by winning manners that perhaps no man ever possessed in a higher degree the nameless power of commanding the love and respect of Orientals. To him the fleet was committed, and without mishap he carried it through to the Dwina. Proceeding with all speed to Moscow he met with a most flattering reception and a political situation of which he knew how to make the most.

Bent on a desperate effort to burst through the barrier which shut him from the Baltic the czar had declared war against Livonia. His troops had already crossed the frontier; and he was prepared to go far to win the favor

trade into Persia and the adjacent states, and thenceforth for many years the English flag passed to and fro in annual voyages upon the Caspian.

Meanwhile the political situation had made a large stride. Ever since Ivan's grandfather had wrested from the Hansa their great colonial emporium at Novgorod, Narva, on the Gulf of Finland, had become the Constantinople of the Baltic. Hitherto the Easterlings had succeeded in retaining their hold, but during Jenkinson's absence Ivan had pushed his invasion to the sea; Narva was in his hands, and Russia for the first time had taken her place as a European power. Blind to the tremendous significance of the event England hastened to grasp the hand her new friend was holding out, and a squadron