RUSSIA, PERSIA, AND ENGLAND
The month of May has witnessed, in the assassination of the Shah of Persia and the coronation of the Czar of Russia, two events of deep and enduring interest to the world. The two most conspicuous representatives of despotic and autocratic rule in Europe and Asia; the very embodiments of the oldest and newest order of things, the past and the future, so different and yet so near akin, have divided between them the attention of mankind. The one, an astute and strong ruler, sincerely striving to lead his country in the path of reform and regeneration, struck down by an assassin on the steps of a mosque; the other, a young man of unknown capacity, placing on his head an Imperial crown, amidst the congratulations of two continents, and the tumultuous applause of an empire only second to that of the English Queen in extent, population, and power.
What more dramatic than the contrast between the swift and bloody death of the successor of the monarchs whose kingdom had already grown old when Cæsar's galleys first touched the shores of Britain, and the triumphant inauguration of the reign of the ruler of the youngest of European Powers, with princes, ambassadors, and nobles bowing before the throne, an armed host around him, and a dazzled and bewildered nation shouting in their madness : 'It is the voice of a god, and not of a man’? In still more vivid dramatic contrast stands the shining figure of the young Czar in the central pavilion on the Khodinsky plain, surrounded by a gay crowd of laughing women
obsequious courtiers, while the bands play Glinka's Life for the Vol. XL-No. 233