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reckless manner in which of late they have been acting, suggest the fear that they must and will work out their unhappy problem, and pass into new combinations, or at last, from pure exhaustion, hand themselves over to that old residuary legatee who knows well how to watch and to wait.

It is very sad to be forced to entertain such thoughts, but the action and language now adopted render it impossible to take a cheerful view of this unhappy section, which is now fast disowning all sympathy with what the greater part of sober and religious Englishmen esteem to be, and even venerate as, the National Church.

The future of that Church will, we are humbly persuaded, be noble and great. All the elements to which we alluded in the early part of this article will receive strength and development. Changes will come, perhaps even great changes, but these will be by way of reforms rather than of revolutions, and in the direction of true and biblical religion rather than of doctrinal narrowness and ecclesiasticism. It is really the great problem of our own times to discriminate between what, on the one hand, is biblical, and confirmed by that one authority to which alone our Church makes her appeal, and what, on the other hand, is simply due to the peculiarities of the teaching of great names in the past, and to a dogmatism which has, in some cases, narrowed the limits of love, tenderness, and truth, which are fixed by the unchanging and irremovable landmarks of the blessed Book of Life.

This problem will not be solved without many a struggle, and perhaps even many a falling away. There are some signs, especially in the popular humanitarian Christology of the day, that, in the future, controversy may again turn upon the great doctrine which called out the Nicene Creed. The gradual disavowal of what may be properly regarded as ecclesiastical and not biblical, may embolden many again to attempt to modify that central truth which is alike biblical and ecclesiastical, and which may rightly be regarded as the essential doctrinal life of a living Church. If this doctrine ever be openly assailed, or any attempt be made to widen our formularies so as to render it opinionable, then controversy such as the Church of England has never known will be rolling round it, and storm and stress will try it, compared with which our present trouble will be only as the spring-tide rain. The issue of such a conflict will be what it has always been; but it may be accompanied with changes which now seem remote and improbable. These, however, will matter but little. The depositum fidei will remain, and the English Church will go onward on her brightening way.

We may here close these thoughts. Their moral and summary would seem to be this-that we are now in the midst of trial and disquietude, and that now, if ever, is the time for each loyal member of the Church of England to pray to be endued with the spirit of

gentleness, sobriety, and moderation. These miserable strugglings do infinite harm to the great cause of religion, and help on terribly the infidelity which is now displaying itself in more serious manifestations than ever. How little do these partisans reflect that every reckless expression, every wild word of bitterness and defiance, is placing stumbling-blocks, countless and wearying, along the pathway of those whose feet are already on the dark mountains! How can a doubter be called upon to believe in a religion of which many of the more earnest and devoted of its professors can use the language that now is used on the platform or in the columns of the party newspaper? How can the declaration that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, be reconciled with many of the words and acts that, within the last few weeks, have been spoken and done in the maintenance of positions of obstinacy and self-will?

If no other considerations can influence, these at least may be rightly urged. The greatest difficulties of the future are all summed up in the word Unbelief. Let us not add to those difficulties by exhibitions of bitterness and intolerance towards each other, but bear and forbear, as far as possible lead and not drive, hope and look

forward.

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C. J. GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL.

RUSSIA.

PART I.

PARTLY in consequence of the Czar's conversation with Lord Augustus Loftus, and partly as a result of the irritation against Turkey, a wave of sympathy with the Russian people is passing over England. This is a circumstance in itself very agreeable to those who, like the present writer, have been long trying to induce their countrymen to take a more friendly view of the acts and aims of the great Northern Empire. If this wave of sympathy runs in some places a little too high, that is only what happens in all reactions. Now, therefore, it would appear, is a fitting time to take once more an estimate of Russia, setting down, of course, nought in malice, but trying at the same time, as far as possible, to be on our guard against any unduly favourable prepossessions.

What, then, is the condition, and what are the prospects, of that country at the commencement of the last quarter of the nineteenth century?

Russia, it must be remembered, has been changing very much of late, and the older books, those even which refer to the reign of Nicholas, are only useful as explaining the origin of a great deal that still exists. Nevertheless some of them should not be passed over by anyone who wishes really to understand the present state of affairs. Foremost amongst these I should be inclined to put Haxthausen's Travels; La Russie et les Russes by the late excellent M. Nicolas Tourguéneff, the worthy friend and pupil of Stein; Le Monde Russe et la Révolution by M. Herzen, together with his brilliant little treatise, Du Développement des Idées révolutionnaires en Russie; and several of the works of Baron Theodore de Fircks, a Courlander who wrote under the anagram of Schédo-Ferroti.

During the reign of Alexander the Second many more travellers from the West have visited Russia. Dean Stanley's Lectures on the Eastern Church, Mr. Sutherland Edwards's Russians at Home, the valuable notes which were published at the office of the Continental Review, and which, though anonymous, are known to have been from the pen of one of the most learned and careful of our historians, the Modern Russia of Eckhardt, the novels of M. Ivan Tourguéneff, the German book which was published in this country under the title of Dis

tinguished Persons in Russian Society, the historic and literary works of Mr. Ralston, Mr. H. Barry's Russia in 1870, the writings of Schnitzler, and various other publications have brought into circulation in the west of Europe a great many just ideas about the Empire of the Czars, while at the same time the periodical press has directed much more attention to it.

It was, however, reserved for the year 1877 to see the appearance of an English book upon Russia which is destined, I think, to take and to keep for some time in Western Europe the sort of place which Haxthausen's writings held until change of circumstances made them to a great extent obsolete.

I allude to the work of Mr. Mackenzie Wallace which was published a few weeks ago, and which will assuredly be the only book upon Russia which persons in this country who are not specially interested in her affairs will for some time care to read.

I have spoken of Mr. Mackenzie Wallace's book as likely to take the place of Haxthausen's, but it is in one respect a far more valuable production.

Haxthausen travelled for the purpose of writing, under the immediate protection of the Russian Government, and could not help seeing many things too exclusively through official spectacles.

Mr. Wallace, after an unusually long period of preparation in Scotland, France, and Germany, went to Russia to study it for his own pleasure, and remained there for nearly six years, going into almost every corner of the country and seeing all manner of men and women, from the highest society of St. Petersburg and Moscow to the tents of the Bashkirs and the Khirgis of the Inner Horde.

I need hardly say that he is perfectly acquainted with the Russian language, or that he is, as all who know the country well usually are, animated with the kindest feelings towards Russia and her people.

Mr. Wallace would no doubt have produced a more complete book if he had incorporated with his text the volume of dissertations which he promises in his preface; but I think that he has exercised a wise discretion for the public, if hardly for himself, in not delaying the publication of his present work, because to throw into English society at this moment a large amount of knowledge about the Russia of today, in a form which can be easily assimilated by persons who read as they run, is a considerable political service. Anyone can see at a glance that the writer, if he had not had to think of the 'general reader,' would have omitted something and added much. It is quite in harmony with the good sense and self-possession which the Scottish people as a whole showed during the passionate days of last autumn, that this singularly fair and sober contribution to the Eastern Question should be the work of a Scotchman.

In the following pages I propose to supplement personal impressions by many helps, but I shall use Mr. Wallace's book as a sort

of court of appeal to which I may refer in confirmation or correction of conclusions at which I have arrived from other sources.

Neither the area nor the population of the Russian Empire is exactly known.

Some writers (see Statesman's Year Book for 1876) put the former at about one-sixth of the inhabited globe. Anyhow it is more than twice that of the United States or of the Chinese Empire, and a long way on to twice our own. On the other hand we cannot reckon the population in round numbers at more than, if indeed it comes up to, eighty-three millions.

This sparseness of population as compared with area does not result, as in the case of the British Isles, from a thickly peopled nucleus being surrounded by thinly peopled colonies. European Russia itself is very scant of population. If, adding rather over five and a half millions for Poland and nearly two millions for Finland, we say that it contains seventy-one or seventy-two millions, leaving the rest for the Caucasus, Siberia, and Central Asia, we may be pretty near the mark.

Mr. Wallace says:

If we take European Russia as a whole, we find that the population is only about 14 to the square verst,' whilst in Great Britain, for a similar area, the average density is about 114. Even the most densely populated region, the northern part of the black earth zone, has only about 40 to the square verst. A people that has such an abundance of land, and can support itself by agriculture, is not likely to devote itself to industry, and not likely to congregate in towns.

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It may be presumed, I suppose, that no town is worthy of the name unless it contains at least 10,000 inhabitants.

Now, if we apply this test, we shall find that in the whole of European Russia, in the narrower sense of the term, excluding Finland, the Baltic provinces, Lithuania, Poland, and the Caucasus, which are politically, but not socially, parts of Russia, there are only 127 towns. Of these only 25 contain more than 25,000, and only 11 contain more than 50,000 inhabitants."

A great portion of the gigantic area of the Russian Empire consists of inhospitable wastes, but much of it consists of land of the most glorious and abounding fertility.

Mr. Herbert Barry thus writes of Siberia, which is, with some, a synonym for desolation:

I travelled in many parts of Siberia, in which the climate was everywhere more or less temperate and endurable, never suffering myself from its severity, nor finding it anywhere worse than the climate of Moscow. A great deal of the land I saw to have a fine agricultural soil, a rich deep black loam, where anything

A verst is equal to 3,500 feet.

2 These are-St. Petersburg, 668,000; Moscow, 602,000; Odessa, 121,000; Kishinef, 104,000; Sarátof, 93,000; Kazan, 79,000; Kief, 71,000; Nicolaieff, 68,000; Karkof, 60,000; Tula, 58,000; Berditchef, 52,000.

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