He is not at first impressive, simply because he is incapable of playing a part, even a royal one. But the more you see of him the more he grows on you. He has no love of display, of uniforms, of the parade of royal power. He is wise with the wisdom of sympathy, and eager to help his people, and benevolent in his thought of them to a degree for which I know no parallel. I think it must be due to the unmistakable irradiations of this kindliness of heart that no attempts have been made upon his life, even during the bitterest frenzies of revolutionary hate. In the menace with which the existence of royalty is surrounded, one would expect to find the Imperial family living amid all the oppressions of constant fear. On the contrary, I thought them the happiest royal family I have seen. They were so naturally affectionate and happy that it was even possible to forget that they were royal. They had apparently accepted the dangers of their life as soldiers do--as we all accept the lesser dangers of our ordinary day--and were unaffected by them. What they thought of the problems of their rule I do not know; and I do not know enough of their people to understand what those problems really are. But surely no power could be more beneficently exercised than this man’s must be; and if his spirit could only animate the instruments of his authority and the innumerable officials who are necessary to administer it, the mad asperities of recrimination in Russia would be as impossible to the administration and its opponents as they are to the Tsar himself. He is a Dane, through his mother, and his qualities are those that make the Royal Families of Denmark and Sweden so charming. But these are the constitutional monarchies of a kindly and contented people, who have no cause to rebel against a government that is their own creation, and who show no awe of a ruling family as unassuming as themselves. I think, if one must be born Royal, it would be wise to be born to a Scandinavian Crown. I have rarely felt happier than I did when I heard that Nicholas II. had called on his subjects to take a share in the government of the vast Russian Empire. The publication of the Imperial Manifesto of October, 1905, in which the Emperor announced the creation of the Imperial Duma, was an event of first-class importance, and I admired the spirit of the nation which had shown its determination to limit the power of the Crown and the wisdom of the Emperor in yielding to the desires of his subjects. “This is the first step,” I said, “on the path which must ultimately lead to the substitution of democratic for autocratic government in Russia.” My affection for the Emperor and Empress, my enthusiasm for the advancement of democratic ideas, my recollections of a long visit to Russia, all combined to intensify my interest in the dawn of freedom in a land which I felt, when I visited it, was part of Asia included in Europe by some strange mistake of the geographers.