In writing these sketches I have no pretension to dabble in history; for that I am neither fitted nor documented. All I desire is to place on record some memories at first hand of certain remarkable people with whom I have been brought in contact. In order, however, to understand the state of feeling in Russia at the time with which I am dealing, it is impossible not to allude, however briefly, to the Polish insurrection of which the influence seemed to pervade everything. Poland was in the mouths of all men—Poland and the attitude of England. The year 1863 had opened grimly enough for Poland. The Tsar’s brother, the Grand Duke Constantine Nicolaievitch, was Viceroy at Warsaw, and the Government had intelligence to the effect that the city was a hotbed of conspiracies and intrigues, and that an insurrection might be expected to take place at any moment. To prevent this calamity drastic measures were adopted. A good many years earlier the Emperor Nicholas had abolished military conscription in Poland; it was now determined to revive it, but under conditions which would enable the Government to throttle the revolutionary movement by ridding the country of all dangerous men. The old practice of drawing the conscripts by lot was abandoned, and the authorities were invested with the power of arbitrarily choosing the men who should be taken for service. Nor was this the only hardship, for the conscription being limited to the towns, Poland was to be robbed of its most capable men, trade and business must be paralysed, and only the most ignorant and valueless dregs of the population left behind. Who was responsible for this wicked and cruel policy I never heard. It was universally condemned abroad, and not a few Russians recognized the folly of it. Among the Poles, the Marquis Wielopolski, a former governor-general, was the only man who supported it. No man condemned the proceedings of the Government more strongly than Lord Napier. In a despatch to the Foreign Office of January the 26th he described them as in fact “a design to make a clean sweep of the revolutionary youth of Poland; to shut up the most energetic and dangerous spirits in the restraints of the Russian army; it was simply a plan,” he said, “to kidnap the opposition and carry it off to Siberia or the Caucasus.” On the evening of the 14th of January the Grand Duke signed the decree, and during that night houses were broken into and 2,500 men were carried off by press-gangs of police and soldiers. Where the young men who had been marked down were not forthcoming their parents were taken and held as pledges.