and repression will prevent them, and if the private houses of St. Petersburg are to be subjected to indiscriminate bombardment the outlook is indeed serious. Other results are these. The soldiers have been proved to be loyal, but a Government cannot subsist on bayonets alone. Again, there will be a large number of workmen out of work; these men when they go back to their villages will be met with some such remarks as these: “No money. You struck? What for? Get out.” These two last mentioned facts should make strikes in the future more difficult. Some people say that nothing will pacify the revolutionaries; possibly, but the important question is, how far will the revolutionaries be supported by public opinion? That depends entirely on the action of the Government. It is certainly untrue to say that public opinion in Moscow was against the revolutionaries, if it is an exaggeration to say that it supported them. This leads us to another question: What do the people here think of it all? In answer I can only repeat what I said in my last letter: there exists violent and bitter partisanship on both sides; there exists also a large class of onlookers which is half-indifferent, half-resigned, and half-sceptical—in the main indifferent. But if one is to go by facts one can point to the small crowd—a selected and, in some parts, I believe, a paid crowd of men—who attended the manifestation for the Emperor’s birthday, the vast crowd which attended Bauman’s funeral, and the great numbers of working men and others who have been fighting against the Government these last few days. When I was talking to the wounded soldiers to-day in the hospital they told me that they had heard from men returning from the Far East that the reports of a large mutiny in the Army there were untrue, that there had been discontent about not coming home and a small rising, but nothing like what was reported. One man said to me: “We may ask for more soup and meat, but is it likely we are going to mutiny for that? They will give us more if we ask for it; soldiers can’t strike, it is as if the whole population were to strike.” I refrained from pointing out that this is what exactly had occurred in October. I answered by my simile of the starving man who is suddenly given champagne. To-day I tried the Sortes Virgilianæ with regard to the present situation and the chief actors of the drama of Russia. The result was as follows: 1. (For Count Witte) “dextra discedens impulit altam Haud ignara modi puppim.”—Æ. x. 245. 2. (The general situation) “Extemplo turbati animi, concussaque vulgi Pectora, et arrectæ stimulis haud mollibus iræ. Arma manu trepidi poscunt; fremit arma juventus, Flent mæsti mussantque patres. Hic undique clamor Dissensu vario magnus se tollit in auras.” Æ. xi. 451. _January 2nd._