He was the Emperor Alexander: according to Napoleon, the most beautiful and the most treacherous of Greeks. His companion was the Grand-Duke Constantine, and their driver was the Grand-Duke Michel. A strange trio it was, an almost grotesque vision, that passed before my eyes and impressed itself so vividly on my memory that I can see it pass before me to-day, thirty-seven years after--the low carriage drawn by its three horses, the driver and his two companions. Well, the possessor of the gentle and melancholy face, who lived longest in my memory of those three men, was the first to die. Napoleon had done his utmost at Erfürt to make not merely an ally of this man, but a brother. They had called each other Charlemagne and Constantine, and Napoleon had offered Alexander the Empire of the East on condition he would leave him in peaceful possession of the Empire of the West. For the emperor had been impressed with one dominant idea during his reign--he had comprehended that our natural ally against our natural enemy England, was Russia. And of a truth, I beg my readers to ponder the question well, instead of accepting hackneyed political traditions that have been handed on ready-made: alliances between nations become firm on account of _difference of interests_ and not because of _similarity of principles._ Now, of what consequence was it that England proclaimed similar principles to those of France, if she had the same interests throughout the world? What matters it that Russia has different principles so long as her interests are different from ours? Look back over a century, and see how England has increased in power; and you will find that she has robbed us, her neighbouring country and ally, of all she could lay her hands on. Look back over a century of Russian growth and you will see that she has not touched anything belonging to us. Reckon up the colonies of the one and consider the limits of the other. England, who a century ago possessed only five factories in India--Bombay, Singapore, Madras, Calcutta and Chandernagor; who possessed only Newfoundland, in North America, and that strip of coast-line which extends like a fringe from Arcadia to Florida; who possessed only the Lucaya Isles among the Bahamas, the Barbadoes among the Lesser Antilles and Jamaica in the Gulf of Mexico; whose only station in the equinoctial portion of the Atlantic Ocean was St. Helena, of unhappy memory; to-day, like a gigantic sea-spider, has stretched out her web over the five parts of the globe. In Europe she possesses Ireland, Malta, Heligoland and Gibraltar;--in Asia, the town of Aden, which commands the Red Sea, as Gibraltar the Mediterranean; Ceylon, that great peninsula of India, Nepal, Lahore, the Sind, Baluchistan and Kabul; the Singapore Isles, Poulo-Penang and Sumatra; that is to say, a total of 122,333 square leagues of territory, supporting 723,000,000 of men. Without counting, in Africa, Bathurst,