successors in the three Princes Troubetzkoy, in Prince Dolgoroukov, in Prince Lvov, in Count Heyden. The aristocracy join the movement partly from dilettantism, partly from generous convictions, partly from ambition. They have been ruined by luxury, and by the emancipation of the serfs. They have been ousted from high places by the bureaucracy. They would like to play a part in the new régime. They hope that whilst leading the revolutionary forces they may be able to control them, but being generally absentee landlords they have lost touch with the people; being imbued not with the national spirit, but with foreign theories, they have forfeited their confidence.
(f) In Russia as well as in France we find the same financial and economic distress, the same agrarian fermentation. In both countries the peasantry form the backbone of the population, and their condition is lamentable. We all know the lurid picture in La Bruyère of the "wild beasts in human form." We have all read the gloomy accounts of Tolstoy, and the "power of darkness" in Russian villages. The peasant in 1905 was the silent pathetic chorus in the tragedy, at first keeping in the background whilst aristocrats and journalists fill the
