Russia is the last-born child of European civilisation. While the nations of the west were painfully hammering out their culture and their polity, under the leadership of the Church, in the school of feudalism, through the inspiration of Roman law, the thinly populated expanse of forest and morass, which stretches between the Baltic and the Ural mountains was subject to Tartar rule and made no claim to civilised life. Even Christianity, which might under happier circumstances have become a bond of union between the backward north and the cultured south, proved rather a hindrance than a help, on account of the enmity between the East and the West. [Sidenote: =Ivan the Terrible.=]As long as Constantinople stood, Moscow was its disciple and its ally; when Constantinople fell, Moscow claimed to be its heir, and its avenger. It was not till the days of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century that the domination of the Tartar was overthrown, and Russia began to be a nation and to enter into relations with other nations. Its prosperity was short-lived. [Sidenote: =The troublous times.=] Hardly had the breath left the body of the savage autocrat in 1584, than a period of anarchy and misery began, which has left its mark upon the country in the legal establishment of serfdom, and was only ended by the accession of the Romanoff dynasty to the throne in 1612. [Sidenote: =Michael Romanoff.=] Michael, the first of that ill-fated house, could do little more than repress the elements of disorder, and restore the authority of the Czar, but so well was this work done, that he was enabled to hand on to his son Alexis, on his death in 1645, a crown which was at once popular secure and despotic. Two dangers only threatened the infant state; one from the turbulent spirit of the local nobles, the boyárs, the other from the physical power wielded by the national guard, called the Streltsi, who played the part of the Prætorian guard, or the Janizaries, of the court of Moscow, and were always as ready to intimidate as to protect their sovereign. [Sidenote: =Reign of Alexis.=] In the earlier years of the reign of Alexis, however, all went well. In 1648 he began the march of Russia towards the south-east of Europe by assuming the protectorate of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, then in revolt against Poland, and succeeded in obtaining legal sanction for the absolute autocracy of the Czar, by the passing of a code, or constitution, which concentrated all the powers of the state in his hands. By these two measures, which established the internal polity of Russia, and indicated the direction of her foreign policy, Alexis may with some justice claim to have been the real founder of the greatness of his country. Unfortunately a change soon took place. The weak and amiable Czar fell quickly into the hands of courtiers and favourites. Corruption and faction asserted themselves among the boyárs. The government became disorganised. Sedition broke out in the