Such a state of feeling in the lower and more backward social strata rendered it at all events easier for would-be reformers of the conspirator type to enter into closer contact with the plebeian element. Though educated men could not have any sympathy with the mystic views and tone, they found a practical ally in the sullen dissatisfaction which drove Dissenters to opposition against the Government. So it was under Nicholas. So it still is under Alexander II. It may suit the sacerdotal Ritualists, who would fain establish a connection of High Church Anglicanism with the official orthodoxy of the East, to promote the aggressive policy of the Czar. But English Dissenters, who prize their freedom from clerical trammels, might remember that Autocracy in Russia represents all that is worst in political as well as in religious fields. Besides upholding the Stuart doctrine with the means of a Gengis Khan and a Tamerlane, it pretends, in Church matters, to a Papal authority, crushing the Bible Christian, the eccentric Mystic, and the religious Rationalist, with an equally heavy hand--and, if need be, as in the case of the Greek Uniates under Alexander II., with the Cossack knout. In the educated class of Russia, two very different political currents are observable: the one inclining towards Western Liberalism, whilst the other cultivates the Nationalist sentiment under rather antiquated forms. The "Westerners," "Europeans," or "Liberals," are often regarded by the more stolid adherents of Katkoff as men lacking in patriotism. Between these two parties--if we could speak of parties in a country which has no ordered public life--a third group is observable: the Panslavists, many of whom pursue, under a Liberal mask, aims favourable to the aggrandizement of Czardom. Not a few of the Panslavists are in reality mere Government tools. Others, who, like Aksakoff, began as independent workers in the Panslavist cause, finally yielded to Government temptation; but after a while even they were found to be too much imbued with reforming ideas, and consequently were placed under police surveillance. The great mass of the Russian people has nothing to do with Panslavism; it does not even know what it is. The idea of a Slav brotherhood is foreign to it. It can be made, by much priestly preaching, to take a sort of bigoted interest in alleged co-religionists who are said to be ill-treated by "unbelieving Turks;" but the interest and the understanding do not go beyond that. Such is the distinct statement made lately by one of the best observers, Ivan Turgenieff, the novelist, in a conversation with a German writer. As to the revolutionary party in Russia, it has more and more become estranged from the Panslavistic tendency--so much so that at present it stands in direct opposition to it.