The Russia of to-day differs _toto coelo_ from the Russia of a hundred years ago. Absolutism died with the Emperor Nicholas, and no Russian Tsar will ever again be able to rule, or even try to rule, without taking into account the will of his people. The relations between the sovereign and his subjects are for that very reason happier than they ever were, and the events of the last two years have shown that loyalty has not perished because autocracy has given up the ghost. The strength of Holy Russia to-day, in the face of the German war of aggression, lies in the determined attitude of the people—in their pious love for their country, in their almost fanatical belief in their Church, and in their veneration for the great White Tsar who is the head of that Church. The nineteenth century opened darkly enough for Russia. The Emperor Paul had been on the throne for four years—a gloomy, unhappy man, not without ability, not without the wish to do what was right, until his mind was unhinged by madness. The first acts of his reign were worthy of all praise. He showed kindly feeling, clemency, and even generosity to the Poles, setting free those that had been imprisoned, and making ample provision for their heroic leader, Kosciusko. His edict enacting that the succession to the throne should be determined, not by the will or caprice of the reigning sovereign, but by a fixed and certain law of primogeniture, was a wise measure, calculated to save his country from the intrigues and bloodshed under which she had suffered so long. But the early days of his reign were embittered by the knowledge conveyed to him by his Vice-Chancellor, Count Bezbarooks, that it had been the intention of his mother, Catherine the Great, to exclude him from the succession in favour of his own son, Alexander. Apart from that, he was a haunted man. Haunted by the murder of his father, Peter the Third, knowing full well that if the hand was the hand of Orloff, the dictating voice was the voice of his mother, Catherine. [Illustration: THE EMPEROR PAUL I. _From a contemporary Print._ [_To face p. 248._] Haunted by suspicion, unable to trust any living soul—if a curtain rustled, stirred by the wind, a murderer stood hidden behind it; if two courtiers spoke in a whisper, it was a conspiracy; a cough was the signal to a confederate; once when the Empress was talking in a low voice to a foreign ambassador, he bade her speak up, saying: “You may be prepared to play the part of Catherine, but I would have you remember that in me you will not find a Peter the Third.” A terrible speech, showing what he knew of the past, what he dreaded in the future!