"'From these turrets,' said the mustached Russian major who showed me all that was worth seeing in the fortress of Gumri, 'our eagle will one day wing its victorious flight.' If the Russians ever conquer Asiatic Turkey, the first step will undoubtedly be taken from this spot, and therefore has the sagacious emperor commanded no expense to be spared in the perfection of the works. 'The power of Russia is patient as time, vast as space,' once exclaimed a renowned orator in the tribune of the French Chamber. Persons who assert that Nicholas has no ambition, that all thirst of conquest is foreign to his character, are perhaps right; but greatly do those err who believe that he contents him with playing the part of the first Tory in Europe, and thinks only of closing the Russian frontier to liberal ideas, of drilling his guards and passing brilliant reviews. The works done, doing, and planned, at Nicolajeff, Sevastopol, Gumri, Erivan, prove the potent monarch to have ulterior views. For himself, he may be content not to enlarge the enormous territory within whose limits his voice is law. So long as he lives, perhaps, no ukase will silence the Hatti-scherif of the padishad beyond the Arpatschai. But under the shadow of this much-vaunted moderation and love of peace, the prudent emperor forgets not to clear the road of conquest into Asia, and to leave it broad, smooth, and convenient for some succeeding Romanoff." Such speculations as these, proceeding from a man who has travelled, with slow step and observant eye, every inch of the ground to which he refers, and to whom a clear head, reflective habits, and much communion with the people of the country, have given peculiar facilities for the formation of a sound judgment, are of high interest and value. Dr Wagner is no dogmatist, but a close and candid reasoner, abounding in facts to support what he advances, and having at his fingers' ends all that has been written not only in his own country, but in England and elsewhere, on the subject of Russia and her emperor, of her policy and her eastern neighbours. And it is to the credit of his impartiality that his writings afford no clue to his own political predilections. He stigmatises abuses wherever he meets them, and from whatever cause proceeding; but whilst showing due sympathy with the gallant Circassians and long-suffering Armenians, he wholly eschews the insane propagandism so rife in the writings of many of his countrymen. He is evidently not of opinion that autocrat and oppressor are always synonymous, and that absolutism is essentially the worst tyranny.