husband was tricked into recognising her when they were suddenly brought face to face. This lady was consigned to the fortress of Schlüsselburg, and was so entirely lost sight of that her husband, presuming she was dead, married again. Ten years later he heard that she was alive and had been transported to Saghalien. Having somehow settled matters with his second wife, he followed his first to the other end of the world and was eventually allowed to settle with her at Vladivostok. In spite of restrictions, hardships and almost intolerable conditions, the political exile has been a distinct aid and valuable factor in the settlement and development of Siberia, carrying with him ideals and standards and a degree of intelligence far in advance of the native Siberian settler and peasant. The infusion of such an element is all the more needed because of the low average of intelligence of the great mass of the convicts, many of whom become permanent residents of Siberia. Mr. Henry Norman has said of the prisoners in the prison of Irkutsk, as he found them: “Never has it been my lot, though I have visited prisons, civilised and uncivilised, in many parts of the world, to see human nature at such a low ebb.... From this point of view, Russian criminology has a task unknown in countries where civilisation has reached a higher average of development.” It is the criminal exile who has been a bar to progress in Siberia, and with the cessation of the transportation of this class of convicts, the future is brighter for the great exile territory which is so rich in natural possibilities. Siberia will no doubt become the granary of the world. Its millions of fertile acres must ere long develop its great food producing qualities. With its great stretches of prairie waiting for the plough, its huge forests and magnificent waters, “it is evident that the Siberia of convicts and prisoners is passing away and the Siberia of the reaping machine, the gold drill, the timber yard, the booming, flourishing new town is awakening into new life.” The present condition of Russia is appalling. Centuries of autocratic rule, backed by barbarous methods, such as have been set forth at some length in the foregoing pages, have culminated now in a social upheaval that threatens the collapse of a vast empire. The stability of the government is wholly undermined; long continued, merciless repression has failed; resistance to constituted authority becomes daily more daring and embittered. The Czar and his bureaucracy are more and more fiercely and systematically assailed, despite the increased reprisals of despotic power and the temporary triumph of a reactionary policy.