Alexander I. in his later years, and his successor Nicholas I., fell back on a reactionary policy. Even Freemasonry was prohibited, mere literary societies of the early forties were considered seditious, and their members were punished with imprisonment and death. There now sprang up political secret societies, whose dream was of a federal republic, or at least of a constitutional monarchy. The accession of Alexander II. in 1855 strengthened the hopes of the reformers. The study of political and social questions became the fashion; while professors, students, and the “intellectuals” of the upper and middle classes warmly engaged in the “underground” movement. With this period are associated such names as those of Herzen, Bakounin, and Tchernishevsky, whose writings were the inspiration of the party, and even influenced for a time the Tsar himself. But the emancipation of the serfs, on February 19th, 1861, bitterly disappointed those who had hoped great things of the new monarch, and who saw from the way in which this and other liberal measures were emasculated by officials, to whom the drafting of them was entrusted by the Tsar, how futile it was to expect any effective reform as a grace from an autocrat. The reform movement, now definitely socialistic, speedily took on a revolutionary character, and culminated in the active sympathy and support given to the Polish revolt of 1863. Alexander II. resorted to the old coercive methods; all attempts to voice the aspirations and needs of the people, or even the academic discussion of political questions, were met with the savage punishments of martial law, imprisonment, exile, death. In face of a new enactment, which had professed to give fair trial to all accused persons, special courts were set up to try political offenders; and the practice of banishment by “administrative methods” (_i.e._ without any trial at all) was instituted. A time of enforced quiet followed, when the leaders of the movement were either dead, imprisoned, or had fled into voluntary exile abroad; but it served as a time of self-education and study for the younger generation, at home or in foreign Universities, and in the early seventies the revival came. Our author here takes up the story with his account of the Propagandist movement, which was peaceful, except in so far as it aimed at stirring up the peasants to demand reform; for, in the absence of any constitutional methods for expressing their desires, this could only be effected by organised uprisings. He describes how this movement developed into terrorism under the system of “white terror” exercised by the Government, and how, after the assassination of Alexander II., the strong hand of despotism succeeded in checking, until a few years ago, the passionate struggle for liberty.