people with the help and with the co-operation of these same Zemstvos or local assemblies, the aim of which was the improvement of the local conditions of existence of the population of the different governments or provinces of the Russian Empire. There was absolutely nothing that was revolutionary in this address. Unfortunately there happened to be in the vicinity of the young Empress a person whose influence had always been perniciously exercised, whenever it had manifested itself: the Princess Galitzyne, her Mistress of the Robes. Out of a feeling of personal dislike, or rather hatred, against one of the signatories of this document, which, on account of the consequences that followed upon its composition, became historical, Princess Galitzyne explained to the Sovereign at the head of whose household she stood, that this appeal in favour of a liberal system of government ought to be discouraged, if not crushed, at once. Alexandra Feodorovna was then beginning to acquire the absolute power over her consort’s mind, which she was never to lose in the future, and she spoke to him of the matter suggested by the Princess, on the very day that different deputations, coming from all parts of Russia to express their good wishes to the young Imperial couple, were about to be received by them in the Winter Palace. Nicholas II. has never in his whole life had an opinion of his own, but he has shown himself enthusiastic for all those that have been suggested to him. He promised his wife “to say something,” which would put into their proper place the people daring enough to dream of anything likely to diminish his own power or prerogatives. He forgot, however, one thing, perhaps the most important one, and that was that these persons he was about to see, were not at all those who had signed the unlucky address, of which it would have been far better for everybody to forget the text as soon as possible. The result of this first intervention of the Empress in affairs of State which did not concern her is but too well known. The Czar instead of thanking the people who had come to lay at his feet the expression of their loyalty, declared to them that they ought never to “indulge in any senseless ‘dreams.’” The words were repeated everywhere, and ran from mouth to mouth in the whole of Russia. They inflicted on the young popularity of Nicholas II. a blow from the effects of which it never recovered. This was the prologue of the tragedy which came to an end, if it has done so, with the signature of the Manifesto of Pskov. After this rise of the curtain was to begin a drama, all the different acts of which appear to us shrouded in bloody clouds.