It is a fashion of this humanitarian age to make allowances for the harsh deeds of those who lived in ruder times, and in this nineteenth century even Ivan the Terrible has found apologists. His atrocities, his joy in the perpetration of the cruellest tortures on the innocent, all his wickednesses are admitted; but they call his lust by a Greek name and say he is to be pitied rather than condemned. Yet some there must be even now, who, when they read that Ivan always went to the torture rooms with joy and came away from its fiendish practices invigorated, refreshed and gay, will rightly regard him with loathing and horror. Not only is his character without a redeeming trait, but his nature is so fiendish and foul that the student may read long and investigate very closely before making sure that Ivan was human. His lusts had not the saving grace of humour; his fear even was sulphurous. Neither circumstances nor events either mitigate or condone his cruelties. Throughout his life he was actuated by one impulse only, to gratify and preserve himself. Those who believe that the occasion makes the man must feel that the fifty-years rule of this despot upsets that theory. Never was there such need for a Cromwell--the country could not produce a man, much less a liberator. Doubtless the action of previous rulers, the centuries of thraldom to Tartars, the thorough teaching of the Christian doctrine of obedience to rulers, contributed to the servility of the people. One of his tortured victims, it is true, did try to assault him, but the wretch was at once killed by the watchful Tsarevich, and in future Ivan ran no such risks. Prelates rebuked him and suffered; his victims suffered and forgave him--none tried to free themselves or help others. In all this dreary time only one man appears to have acted worthily. The Englishman, Jerom Horsey, exerted all the influence he possessed on behalf of Ivan's prisoners. The services he rendered deserve a memorial; instead he received the condemnation of the Russia Company, in whose employ he was, and the encomiums and admiration of the Tsar whom he loathed and despised. The magnitude and multitude of his crimes place Ivan far beyond other tyrants of his class. It is reassuring to know that in no other country and at no other time would his rule be permitted. The mere possibility of a recurrence of such a time of terror would determine every thinking being to die childless. The spirit of freedom renders the ascendency or continuance of his like impossible--but in mediæval Moscow the spirit of freedom had no place. CHAPTER VI _The Troublous Times_ "But war has spread its terrors o'er thee, And thou hast been in ashes laid: Thy throne seemed tottering then before thee, Thy sceptre feeble as thy blade."--DMITRIEV. "Yea, one is full out as villainous as the other." W. RUSSELL--_A Bloudie and Tragicke Massacre._