In contemporary opinion Alexander II. and Alexander III. still live, while Nicholas I. is practically forgotten. Alexander II. is surrounded with the martyr's halo, and is thought of only as the emancipating Czar who was got out of the way before he could sign the liberty-giving bill for a constitution. Public opinion will not be dissuaded from finding the fact remarkable that the nihilists succeeded for the first time in reaching the Czar at the moment when all the privileges of the reigning oligarchy were threatened. Therefore people will not remember any traits in him except good ones, a thing not altogether consistent with the picture of him left by Kropotkin in his memoirs. Of Alexander III., on the contrary, only evil is heard, which I, however, must doubt for many reasons. For I have been told little incidents of his most private life, incidents which I cannot repeat, out of consideration for the incognito of my informant, but which show a certain knightliness and uprightness, and a truly princely kindness to the weak. Another man is answerable for the pitilessness of his fatal policy--Pobydonostzev, the Torquemada of Russia. It is, however, inevitable that history should preserve only that picture which expresses the sum total of the effect of a personality. Therefore the memory of Alexander III. is certainly overloaded with sins of omission. XXI PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PRESS The fine imperial library in St. Petersburg, which I was permitted through the kindness of our legation to use, possesses a specialty in a particular class of works, the collection of so-called "Russica"--_i. e._, everything that has been written in foreign languages about Russia. Polite attendants, speaking various languages, assist the visitor. One learns from them that it is the business of special agents abroad to report on publications which relate to Russia, and to send them in. So it happens that probably nowhere in the world is there such an accumulation of revolutionary literature as in this imperial collection. For patriotic writings are for the most part in Russian, so that they may be appreciated and quickly rewarded. The semi-official literature in foreign languages is not to be compared in quantity or importance with that which true patriots are forced to their sorrow to write in foreign languages. I looked through piles of this forbidden literature. The impression I received was desperately disheartening. There is nothing which has not been said about Russia. The severest and best-attested attacks on the régime, on persons, on conditions, stand there quietly, volume by volume, in the imperial library, and have had exactly as much effect as whip-strokes on water. The Russian political writer who wishes to war upon the present system with the weapon of reckless criticism must lose all hope in face of this library. What more can be said than has already been said by Milyukov, by Lanin, by Leroy-Beaulieu? The