amidst the injustice of this world, secures the [ing itself closely pressed by a reaction at blessing of Heaven.

home, feels a greater desire to form alliances with other nations; and consequently it is less solicitous about treaties and rights than France, who would unite herself more readily with monarchical states, if she were not restrained by the alliance with England. It is evident that England now occupies the place which was occupied by France after the revolution. Already the Grey ministry finds itself compelled to repair one extreme resolution by another; and in a very short time, repose, order, and peace, will become impossible. We rewhich threatens the peace of Europe." Such is the light in which our government is viewed by the continental powers, and such the alarm which they feel at the threatened attack on Holland by the two revolutionary states; and yet we are told by the partisans of administration, that they are going to attack Antwerp “to preserve the peace of Europe."

The Dutch may have Antwerp wrested from them; they may be compelled, from inability to resist, to surrender it to the Allies. All that will not alter the case; it will not ultimately avert an European war; it will not the less prove fatal to the progress of freedom. The Allies, and above all, England, allow the key to the Scheldt, and the advanced post of France against Britain, to remain in the hands of the French, or, what is the same thing, their subsidiary ally, the Belgians. In every age the establishment of the French power in Flan-peat, therefore, that it is the Grey ministry ders has led to an European war; that in which a revolutionary force is intrenched there, is not destined to form an exception. A war of opinion must ensue sooner or later, when the tricolour standard is brought down to the Scheldt, and the eagle of Prussia floats on the Meuse. When that event comes, as come it will, then will England, whether republican or monarchical, be compelled to exert her force to drive back the French to their old frontier. A second war must be undertaken to regain what a moment of weakness and infatuation has lost in the first.

But what will be the result of such a war, provoked by the revolutionary ambition of France, and the tame subservience of England, on the interests of freedom? If revolutionary ambition prevails, what chance has liberty of surviving amidst the tyranny of democratic power? If legitimate authority conquers, how can it exist amidst the Russian and Austrian bayonets? When will real freedom again be restored as it existed in France under the mild sway of the Bourbons; or as prosperous a period be regained for that distracted country, as that which elapsed from 1815 to 1830? It is evident, that freedom must perish in the fierce contest between democratic and regal tyranny: it is hard to say, whether it has most to fear from the triumph of the French or the Russian bayonets. To their other claims to the abhorrence of mankind, the liberals of England, like the Jacobins of France, will add that of being the assassins of real liberty throughout the world.

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The ministerial journals have at length let out the real motive of our conduct; the Times tells us that it is useless to blink the question, for if the French and English do not attack Antwerp together, France will attack it alone, and that this would infallibly bring on a general war. That is to say, we have got into the company of a robber who is bent upon assailing a passenger upon the highway, and to prevent murder we join the robber in the attack. Did it never occur to our rulers, that there was a more effectual way to prevent the iniquity? and that is to get out of such bad company, and defend the traveller. Would France ever venture to attack Antwerp if she were not supported by England? Would she ever do so if England, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, were leagued together to prevent the march of revolutionary ambition? On whom then do the consequences of the aggression clearly rest? On the English government, who, against the interests and honour of England, join in the attack, when they hold the balance in their hands, and by a word could prevent it.

It is evident that it is this portentous alliance of France and England which really threatens the peace of Europe, and must ultimately lead It is sometimes advantageous to see the light to a universal war. The Manheim Gazette in which the conduct of Great Britain is view-is perfectly right; it is the Grey administration ed in foreign states. The following article is who head the revolutionary crusade. Holding from the Manheim Gazette of the 8th inst.: the balance in our hands, we voluntarily throw "The French ministry and the English Whigs our decisive weight into the scales of aggreshave in vain asserted that they do not mean to sion, and the other powers must unite to restore rule by the principle of propagandism; these the beam. assurances are no guarantee, since propagandism subsists in the system they have established, and cannot cease till that system is at an end. The delegates of the people, for in this light must be viewed all governments founded upon the principle of popular sovereignty, must of necessity seek their allies among other delegates of the same character; and to endeavour to find friends among their neighbours, is to act as if they sought to revolutionize such states as profess the monarchical principle. In this respect the influence of the Grey ministry is more pernicious than that of the French ministry. The former having commenced by revolutionizing England, and feel

The years of prosperity will not endure for ever to England, any more than to any earthly thing. The evil days will come when the grandeur of an old and venerated name will sink amidst the storms of adversity; when her vast and unwieldy empire will be dismembered, and province after province fall away from her mighty dominions. When these days come, as come they will, then will she feel what it was to have betrayed and insulted her allies in the plenitude of her power. When Ireland rises in open rebellion against her dominion; when the West Indies are lost, and with them the right arm of her naval strength; when the armies of the continent crowd the

coasts of Flanders, and the navies of Europe | have had many eulogists, but they have had are assembled in the Scheldt, to humble the none who have established their reputation mistress of the waves, then will she feel how so effectually as their successors: Mr. Pitt's deeply, how irreparably, her character has glory might have been doubtful in the eyes of suffered from the infattion of the last two posterity, had he not been succeeded by Lord years. In vain will she call on her once faith-Grey. The contrast between the firmness, inful friends in Holland or Portugal to uphold the cause of freedom; in vain will she appeal to the world against the violence with which she is menaced; her desertion of her allies in the hour of their adversity, her atrocious alliance with revolutionary violence, will rise up in judgment against her. When called on for aid, they will answer, did you aid us in the day of trial? when reminded of the alliance of an hundred and fifty years, they will point to the partition of 1832. England may expiate by suffering the disgrace of her present defection; efface it from the minds of men she never will.

tegrity, and good faith of the one, and the vacillation, defection, and weakness of the other, will leave an impression on the minds of men which will never be effaced. The mag nitude of the perils from which we were saved by the first, have been proved by the dangers we have incurred under the second; the lustre of the intrepidity of the former, by the disgrace and humiliation of the latter. To the bright evening of England's glory, has succeeded the darkness of revolutionary night: may it be as brief as it has been gloomy, and be followed by the rise of the same luminary in a brighter morning, gilded by colours of undecaying

The conservative administration of England | beauty!

KARAMSIN'S RUSSIA.*

NEVER was there a more just observation, | smoother shell than ordinary, while the great than that there is no end to authentic history. ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before We shall take the most learned and enthusi- him." We complain of sameness of thought, astic student of history in the country; one of want of originality in topics, and yet we live who has spent half his life in reading the an- in the midst of a boundless profusion of new nals of human events, and still we are confi- facts and virgin images, for the first time dent that much of what is about to be stated in brought forward by our extended intercourse this article will be new to him. Yet it relates with all parts of the world, and the heart-stirto no inconsiderable state, and is to be found ring events of our political history. There in no obscure writer. It relates to the history never was a period in the annals of mankind, of Russia, the greatest and most powerful em- if we except that of the discovery of America, pire, if we except Great Britain, which exists in which new facts and novel images, and the upon the earth, and with which,-sometimes materials for original thought, were brought in alliance, sometimes in jealousy, we have with such profusion to the hand of genius; and been almost continually brought in contact there never was one in which, in this country during the last half century. It is to be found at least, so little use was made of them, or in in the history of Karamsin, the greatest his-which the public mind seems to revolve so torian of Russia, who has justly acquired an exclusively round one centre, and in one beaten European reputation; but whose great work, and wellnigh worn-out orbit. though relating to so interesting a subject, has hitherto, in an unaccountable manner, been neglected in this country.

We complain that there is nothing new in Literature, that old ideas are perpetually recurring, and worn-out topics again dressed up in a new garb,-that sameness and imitation seem to be irrevocably stamped upon our literature, and the age of original thought, of fresh ideas, and creative genius, has passed away! Rely upon it, the fault is not in the nature of things, but in ourselves. The stock of original ideas, of new thoughts, of fresh images, is not worn out; on the contrary, it has hardly been seriously worked upon by all the previous efforts of mankind. We may say of it, as Newton did of his discoveries in physical science, that "all that he had done seemed like a boy playing on the sea-shore, finding sometimes a brighter pebble or a

Whence has arisen this strange discrepancy between the profusion with which new materials and fresh objects are brought to hand, and the scanty proportion in which original thought is poured out to the world?-The cause is to be found in the impossibility of getting the great majority of men to make the "past or the future predominant over the present." If we add "the absent" to the famous apothegm of Johnson, we shall have a summary of the principal causes which in ordinary times chain mankind to the concentric circles of established ideas. Amidst common events, and under the influence of no peculiar excitement, men are incapable of extricating them selves from the ocean of habitual thought with which they are surrounded. A few great men may do so, but their ideas produce no impression on the age, and lie wellnigh dormant till they are brought to fructify and spread amidst the turbulence or sufferings of another. Thence the use of periods of suffering or intense ex citement to the growth of intellect, and the

development of truth. The past and the future at first sight, the history of Russia is yet are then made the present; ages of experience, singularly susceptible of simplification. It volumes of speculation, are then concentrated embraces four great periods, each of which into the passing results of a few years, and have stamped their own peculiar impress upon thus spread generally throughout mankind. the character of the people, and which have What original thought was evolved in England combined to produce that mighty empire which during the fervour of the Reformation! in now numbers 60,000,000 of men among its France, during the agonies of the Revolution! subjects, and a seventh of the surface of the Subsequent centuries of ease and peace to globe beneath its dominion. each were but periods of transfer and amplification,-of studied imitation and laboured commentary. There has been, there still is, original thought in our age; but it is confined to those whom the agitation of reform roused from the intellectual lethargy with which they were surrounded, and their opinions have not yet come to influence general thought. They will do so in the next generation, and direct the course of legislation in the third. Public opinion, of which so much is said, is nothing but the re-echo of the opinions of the great among our fathers,-legislation among our grandfathers; so slowly, under the wise system of providence, is truth and improvement let down to a benighted world!

The first of these periods is that which commences with the foundation of the Russian empire by Rurick, in 862, and terminates with the commencement of the unhappy division of the empire into apanages, or provisions for younger children, the source of innumerable evils both to the monarchy and its subjects, in 1054. The extent to which the empire had spread, and the power it had acquired before this ruinous system of division commenced, is extraordinary. In the 10th century, Russia was as prominent, comparatively speaking, among the powers of Europe, in point of territory, population, resources, and achievements, as she is at this moment. The conquests of Oleg, of Sviatoslof, and of Vladimir, to whom the sceptre of Rurick had descended, extended the frontiers of the Russian territory from Novogorod and Kieff-its original cradle on the banks of the Dnieper-to the Baltic, the Dwina, and the Bug, on the west; on the south, to the cataracts of the Dnieper and the Cimmerian Bosphorus; in the north, to Archangel, the White Sea, and Finland; on the east, to the Ural Mountains and shores of the Caspian. All the territory which now constitutes the strength of Russia, and has enabled it to extend its dominion and influence so far over Asia and Europe, was already ranged under the sceptre of its monarchs before the time of Edward the Confessor.

We have been forcibly led to these observations by the study of Karamsin's History of Russia, and the immense stores of new facts and novel ideas which are to be found in a work long accessible in its French translation to all, hardly as yet approached by any. We are accustomed to consider Russia as a country | which has only been extricated by the genius of Peter the Great, little more than a century and a half ago, from a state of barbarism, and the annals of which have been lost amidst general ignorance, or are worthy of no regard till they were brought into light by the increasing intercourse with the powers of western Europe. Such, we are persuaded, is the belief of ninety-nine out of an hundred, even The second period comprehends the inamong learned readers, in every European numerable intestine wars, and progressive state; yet we perceive from Karamsin, that decline of the strength and consideration of Russia is a power which has existed, though the empire, which resulted from the adoption with great vicissitudes of fortune, for a thou- of the fatal system of apanages. This method sand years; that Rurick, its founder, was con- of providing for the younger children of suctemporary with Alfred; and that it assailed cessive monarchs, so natural to parental affecthe Bosphorus and Constantinople in the ninth tion, so just with reference to the distribution century, with a force greater than that with of possessions among successive royal famiwhich William the Conqueror subverted the lies, so ruinous to the ultimate interests of the Saxon monarchy at Hastings, and more pow-state, was commenced by the Grand Prince erful than were led against it in after times by the ambition of Catherine or the generals of Nicholas! What is still more remarkable, the mode of attack adopted by these rude invaders of the Byzantine empire was precisely that which long and dear-bought experience, aided by military science, subsequently taught to the Russian generals. Avoiding the waterless and unhealthy plains of Bessarabia and Walachia, they committed themselves in fearful multitudes to boats, which were wafted down the stream of the Dnieper to the Black Sea; and when the future conqueror of the east approaches to place the cross on the minarets of St. Sophia, he has only to follow the track of the canoes, which a thousand years ago brought the hordes of Rurick to the entrance of the Bosphorus.

Complicated, and to appearance inextricable as the transactions of the Slavonic race seem

Dmitri, in 1054, and afforded too ready a means of providing for the succeeding generation of princes to be soon abandoned. The effects of such a system may without difficulty be conceived. It reduced a solid compact monarchy at once to the distracted state of the Saxon heptarchy, and soon introduced into its vitals those fierce internal wars which exhaust the strength of a nation without either augmenting its resources, or adding to its reputation. It is justly remarked accordingly, by Karamsin, that for the next three hundred years after this fatal change in the system of government, Russia incessantly declined; and after having attained, at a very early period, the highest pitch of power and grandeur, she sunk to such a depth of weakness as to be incapable of opposing any effectual resistance to a foreign invader.

The third period of Russian history, and not the least in the formation of its national c

racter, commenced with the Tartar invasion, | one period serious thoughts of deserting his and terminated with the final emancipation of country, and seeking refuge in England from the Moscovite dominions. In 1224, the first his numerous enemies. Yet, Russia, thanks intelligence of a strange, uncouth, and savage to the patriotism of her children and the inenemy having appeared on the eastern frontier, domitable firmness of her character, survived was received at Kieff, then the capital of the all these disasters; in the succeeding reign Muscovite confederacy, for it no longer de- her arms were extended across the Ural mounserved the name of an empire; and two hun- tains over Siberia, though her dominion over dred and fifty years had elapsed before the its immense wilds was for long little more nation was finally emancipated from their than nominal, and a fortress was erected at dreadful yoke. This was accomplished by the Archangel, which secured to her the command abilities and perseverance of John III., the of the White Sea. true restorer, and, in some degree, the second founder of the empire, in 1480, in which year the last invasion of the Tartar was repulsed, and the disgraceful tribute so long paid to the great khan was discontinued. During this melancholy interval, Russia underwent the last atrocities of savage cruelty and barbaric despotism. Moscow, then become the capital, was sacked and burnt by the Tartars, in 1387, with more devastation than afterwards during the invasion of Napoleon; every province of the empire was repeatedly overrun by these ruthless invaders, who, equally incapable of giving or receiving quarter, seemed, wherever they went, to have declared a war of extermination against the human race, which their prodigious numbers and infernal energy in war generally enabled them to carry on with success. Nor was their pacific rule, where they had thoroughly subjugated a country, less degrading than their inroad was frightful and devastating. Oppression, long continued and systematic, constituted their only system of government; and the Russians owe to these terrible tyrants the use of the knout, and of the other cruel punishments, which, from their long retention in the empire of the czars, when generally disused elsewhere, have so long cited the horror of Western Europe.

The last period commences with the taking of Azoph, by Peter the Great, in 1696, which first opened to the youthful czar the dominion of the Black Sea, and terminates with the prodigious extension of the empire, consequent on the defeat of Napoleon's invasion. Europe has had too much reason to be acquainted with the details of Russian victories during this period. Her wars were no longer with the Tartars or Lithuanians: she no longer fought for life or death with the khan of Samarcand, the hordes of Bati, or the czar of Kazan. Emerging with the strength of a giant from the obscure cloud in which she had hitherto been involved, she took an active, and at length a fearful part, in the transactions of Western Europe. The conquest of Azoph, which opened to them the command of the Black Sea-the fierce contest with Sweden, and ultimate overthrow of its heroic monarch at Pultowa-the bloody wars with Turkey, commencing with the disasters of the Pruth, and leading on to the triumphs of Ockzakow, of Ismael, and Adrianople-the_conquest of Georgia, and passage of the Russian arms over the coast of the Caucasus and to the waters of the Araser-the acquisition of Walex-achia and Moldavia, and extension of their southern frontier to the Danube-the partition of Poland, and entire subjugation of their old enemies, the Lithuanians-the seizure of Finland by Alexander-in fine, the overthrow of Napoleon, capture of Paris, and virtual subjugation of Turkey by the treaty of Adrianople, have marked this period in indelible charac ters on the tablets of the world's history. Above Alexander's tomb are now hung the keys of Paris and Adrianople: those of Warsaw will be suspended over that of his successor! The ancient and long dreaded rivals of the empire, the Tartars, the Poles, the French, and the Turks, have been successively vanquished. Every war for two centuries past has led to an accession to the Moscovite territory; and no human foresight can predict the period when the god Terminus is to recede. There is enough here to arrest the attention of the most inconsiderate; to occupy the thoughts of the most contemplative.

The fourth period commences with the abolition of the ruinous system of apanages by the mingled firmness and cunning, wisdom and fortune, of John III., about the year 1480; and continued till the genius of Peter the Great gave the country its great impetus two hundred years after. This period was a chequered one to the fortunes of Moscovy, but, on the whole, of general progressive advancement. Under Vassili, the successor of John III., the Russians made themselves masters of Smolensko, and extended their frontiers on the east to the Dwina. Under John the Terrible, who succeeded him, they carried by assault, after a terrible struggle, Kazan, in the south of Moscovy, where the Tartars had established themselves in a solid manner and formed the capital of a powerful state, which had more than once inflicted, in conjunction with the Lithuanians, the most dreadful wounds on the vitals of the empire. Disasters great and re- History exhibits numerous instances of peated still marked this period, as wave after empires which have been suddenly elevated wave break on the shore after the fury of the to greatness by the genius or fortune of a tempest has been stilled. Moscow was again single man; but in all such cases the dominion reduced to ashes during the minority of John has been as short-lived in its endurance as it the Terrible; it was again burnt by the Tar- was rapid in its growth. The successive emtars; and a third time, by accident; the vic-pires of Alexander, Genghis Khan, Tamer. torious Poles advanced their standards to its gates, and so low were his fortunes reduced, that that heroic but bloody monarch had at

lane, Nadir Shah, Charlemagne, and Napeleon, attest this truth. But there is no example of a nation having risen to durable greatness

or attained a lasting dominion over the bodies | when the people for two centuries drank the and minds of men, but by long previous efforts, cup of humiliation from Tartar conquests, or and the struggles and sufferings of many suc- purchased a precarious respite by the ignocessive centuries. It would appear to be a miny of Tartar tribute, was contemporary with general law of nature, alike in the material and the disastrous English wars in France. The the moral world, that nothing permanent is battle of Cressy was fought in 1314; that of erected but by slow degrees, and that hardship Azincour in 1415; and it was not till 1448, and suffering constitute the severe but neces- that these hated invaders were at length sary school of ultimate greatness. In this finally expelled from the Gallic shores, by the point of view, there is a remarkable analogy effects of the heroism of the Maid of Orleans, between the history, from the earliest periods, and the jealousies of the English nobility in of England, France, and Russia,-the three the time of Henry VI. If these wars were dispowers which stood forth so prominent in the astrous to France,-if they induced the horgreat fight of the 19th century. Their periods rors of famine, pestilence, and Jacquerie, of greatness, of suffering, and of probation, which ere long reduced its inhabitants a-half, from their infancy have been the same; and not less ruinous were their consequences to during the long training of a thousand years, England, exhausting, as they did, the strength each has at the same time, and in a similar of the monarchy in unprofitable foreign wars, manner, been undergoing the moral discipline and leaving the nation a prey, at their termirequisite for ultimate greatness, and the effects nation, to the furious civil contests of York of which now appear in the lasting impression and Lancaster, which for above twenty years they have made upon the world. We do not drenched their fields with blood, almost derecollect to have ever seen this remarkable stroyed the old nobility, and left the weak and analogy in the annals of three first-born of disjointed people an easy prey to the tyrannic European states; but it is so striking, that we rule of Henry VIII., who put 72,000 persons to must request our reader's attention for a few death by the hand of the executioner in his minutes to its consideration. single reign. It is hard to say whether Russia, when emerging from the severities of Tartar bondage-or France, when freed from the scourge of English invasions—or England, when decimated by the frightful carnage of York and Lancaster, were in the more deplor able condition.

The Russian empire, as already mentioned, was founded by Rurick, a hero and a wise monarch, about the year 860; and ere long its forces were so powerful, that eighty thousand Russians attacked the Bosphorus, and threatened Constantinople in a more serious manner than it has since been, even by the victorious arms of Catherine or Nicholas. This first and great cra in Russian story-this sudden burst into existence, was contemporary with that of Alfred in England, who began to reign in 871, and nearly so with Charlemagne in France, who died at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 814, leaving an empire co-extensive with that which was exactly a thousand years afterwards lost by Napoleon.

From this pitiable state of weakness and suffering all the three monarchies were raised about the same period by three monarchs, who succeeded in each, partly by wisdom, partly by good fortune, partly by fraud, in re-constructing the disjointed members of the state, and giving to the central government the vigour and unity which had been lost amidst the distractions and sufferings of former times, but was essential to the tranquillity and wellThe two centuries and a half of weakness, being of society. John III., who achieved this civil dissension, and external decline, which in great work in Russia, was the counterpart of Russia commenced with the system of divid-Louis XI., who at the same time accomplished ing the empire into apanages in 1060, were it in France. John III. ascended the throne in contemporary with a similar period of distrac- 1462, and reigned till 1505. Louis XI. in 1461, tion and debility, both to the English and and reigned till 1483. Both were cautious in French monarchies. To the former by the design, and persevering in execution; both Norman conquests, which took place in that were bold in council rather than daring in the very year, and was followed by continual op- field; both prevailed in a barbarous age, rather pression of the people, and domestic warfare by their superior cunning and dissimulation among the barons, till they were repressed by than the wisdom or justice of their measures. the firm hand of Edward I., who first rallied Both had implicitly adopted the Machiavelian the native English population to the support maxim, that the end will in all cases justify of the crown, and by his vigour and abilities the means, and employed without scruple fraud overawed the Norman nobility in the end of and perfidy, as well as wisdom and perseverthe 13th century. To the latter, by the mise-ance to accomplish their grand object, the rerable weakness which overtook the empire of Charlemagne under the rule of his degenerate successor; until at length its frontiers were contracted from the Elbe and the Pyrenees to the Aisne and the Loire,-till all the great feudatories in the monarchy had become inde pendent princes, and the decrees of the king of France were not obeyed farther than twenty miles around Paris.

The woful period of Moscovite oppression, when ravaged by the successful armies of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Bati, and

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storation of the throne, and abasement of the great feudatories. Both were equally successful. The reunion of the apanages to the crown of the Russian Grand Prince, the subjugation of the ancient republic of Novogorod, the annexation of that of Pfosk by his successors, were steps extremely analogous to the defeat of Charles the Bold, and the acquisition of Normandy and Acquitaine by Louis XI., and the happy marriage of Anne of Britanny to his royal successor. Nor was the coincidence of a similar monarch on the throne, and a similar